RefresH

Check It

2009-01-17T12:26:00.002+10:30

Hey All,

I know there has not been alot said on here lately. SO, i have decided to start a new blog about issues, whatever they are which you can all comment on.
http://thingsthatmakeyoutalk.blogspot.com/
So have a look and go nuts, also tell your freinds the more comments i can get the better.

Cheers,

MR X

2008-05-08T10:33:00.002+09:30

Psalms! "In the Pits"

Psalms are great poems of people being really honest with God.
I've had to re-write a few for Uni assignments and the process of doing so can be really helpful.
Here's an almost Dr Zuess type version of one.

Psalm 80
By a poet who's "In the pits".
From a nation that's "In the pits".
A nation whose neighbours sharpen their sticks.
A nation whose God just sits there and.. What? Knits?
A nation that waits for the hits and the kicks
All they can do is sit and sit, down their in the pits.

"We're falling to bits down here in the pits!"
O God can't you hear us?
God?
Hello?"

He's not listening to them.
He's not listening to us.
He's deaf to the sounds from the pits where they sit.
Is He deaf to the sounds from the pits where we sit?

The pits where we sit.
Way down all alone, all alone in the pits.
All alone?
Hello?

Easter Sunday 2008

2008-03-31T12:49:00.000+10:30

In the last 200 years we have tried to kill Jesus again.

We tried.

We thought we’d buried him.

Placed him in a tomb and rolled across the stone once more.

We had nailed him with our superior reason.

Killed off the miracles.

Scourged him with accusations of irrelevance and obscurity in a modernised, evolved world.

We fed him wine vinegar on a sponge of softened parables and fluffy teaching.

Pieced his power with science and psychology.

We were left with nothing but a cultural hang up.

A cause of war.

The germ of hate and intolerance.

The stop light to learning.

The leader of a house of hypocrites.

We thought that was the end.

We placed atheist guards with weapons of titles and status to keep watch at the stone door of Jesus' tomb. Then went to bed thinking all had finally fallen silent.

Jesus was dead.

And the Church, his body was bloodied, broken and lifeless.

At least this is what should have happened.

Since the age of reason confidently declared ‘God is Dead’. We simply assumed we would see the slow death of Jesus and his Church too.

Well thank God, we were wrong.

Like last time we failed to keep him dead.

Jesus is alive.

Christ has risen... “He has risen indeed.”

He has risen and risen and risen and will keep rising no matter how many times we try to kill him.

Death has been conquered, once and for all.

Hell has been annihilated.

Jesus lives again.

The light that shines in darkness has not gone out.

Boundless love can never replace faceless reason.

The Christian God is a resurrection God

A God of life from death.

Christ’s body, the Church will not stand down and give way.

It cannot be defeated no matter the torture it endures.

The Church will rise again and again and again.

So the executioners scream in protest:

“What went wrong”.

They try to rally the troops once more.

They write books declaring the ‘delusion’ of the world.

They scream out appeals to reason and sense.

And frantically find formulas that state the absurdity of a creator God who cares about everyone of us.

They scramble to try and fill a void that has only one shape.

A shape they rejected.

Yet at Easter, Christians stand united and triumphantly declare, “Jesus lives”.

We loudly and unashamedly protest that the impossible is made possible.

Miracles happen.

Life is more that a set of predicable phenomena.

Love and hope and faith exist.

They come from Jesus.

And Jesus is not dead.

And we the Church are bearers of this faith, hope and love.

The Church is not dead.

The Church is alive again.

The world senses it has.

The crowds and officials sense it has.

The disciples sense it has.

And we ask how?

Christ was not risen by the power of his disciples, but by the power of God.

In the dead of night when all Christ’s followers were lost in their own misery.

God raised Jesus,

death was left behind.

No!

It was not the result of the disciples properly researched 5 year action plans.

It was not from the establishment of a fully community negotioted vision statement.

And it was not the result of a fully coherent socially relevent yet biblically founded superior theology.

God raised Jesus.

At the moment when the disciples were at their spiritually and corporately weakest.

God raised Jesus and God raised the church.

However, some of us today stand at the entrance of the empty tomb and wonder what has happened, afraid to go in.

We wander the garden in tears because of what has happened in the past.

Tears that cloud our understanding and hope.

Like Mary, we blindly ask even Jesus himself ‘Where is your body so that we can give you a proper burial, befitting of they great body you once were.”

We crawl at the feet of the resurrected church and see nothing but a care-taker.

We wonder where the church has gone.

It is transformed beyond all recognition.

But Jesus stands before us all very much alive, calling our name and saying:

“Why are you crying?”

“Who are you looking for?”

Let us open our eyes and see the risen Christ.

Let us hear our names and rise to meet the risen Christ.

Rise and believe.

Let us hear the resurrected church call our own names...

Then we will believe.

Then we will have faith once more.

Or, let us like Peter and the beloved disciple look deep into the empty tomb.

Let the sight of folded grave clothes and boxed up hymn books transform us.

The Church, Christ body is not dead.

We are very much alive, growing and changing, feeding the world and on the move.

Christ is risen.

They tried to kill him again.

But He is alive.

Grace and Love conquered reason and skepticism.

Hope conquered despair.

Light conquered dark.

God’s mystery conquered human understanding.

Truth and faith conquered modernity and hypocrisy.

Forgiveness conquered a hardened heart.

and humility conquered individualism.

We tried to kill Jesus once more.

But by the power of God.

Christ is risen

He has risen indeed.

Today, like Mary in the garden, we see and hear our Lord, saying:

“Now go and tell my disciples”.

Amen.

The ‘C’ of lent, Christ Crucified

2008-03-19T16:23:00.000+10:30

6 weeks: A B C’s of lent. Attitudes, Behaviour and Christ Crucified, For this time we’ve been calling us to do something a bit more life changing than giving up iced coffee. This lent we have talked about taking off what gets in the way of God and us and asking God to dress us up in the A’ and ‘ and now C’ that would begin to look like that abundant life Jesus talked about.

This is the last week of the series, next Sunday is Easter, today is Palm Sunday. Take off our wrong image of Christ become captivated by Christ Crucified.

OS trips,

Arrival at a different city.

Nicole and me have a special ritual...

Palm Sunday is about a certain arrival into a city which is nothing like the welcome Nicole and I had in Europe!

Let me set the scene.

The time is about 30AD, the place is Jerusalem in the Middle East. Jerusalem is the big capital of Israel, the country of the Jews. Its the political, the spiritual and the cultural capital for the Jews. Their entire history as a nation, as a peoples is tied up in this city and the big focus is the Temple of this city. This is where the God of the Jews, the foundation of the Jews is worshipped and the temple is where its all at.

For the Past 3 years there has been this guy from the hillbilly North who has been wondering around with a bunch of followers doing stacks of remarkable things like healings, miracles to do with food and wine!, driving out deamons, and controlling the weather. He apparently has this amazing gift of the gab. Saying things with a boldness and cutting edge truth that no-one has ever done before. His followers seem to increase everyday and just a few days back it has been reported that this guy has actually raised someone back from the dead by merely going into his tomb and shouting ‘Wake up dude’ (‘Lazarus, get up”).

And right now this guy, with all his followers and a great crowd of people supremely interested in seeing this man they call Jesus Christ, are about enter the big capital Jerusalem. The air is thick with sweat and excitement. Anticipation of something/anything worth writing home about is in the air.

Jesus gets closer,

He orders a donkey from nearby.

The disciple put their cloaks on the beast for Jesus to ride in on.

The crowd and the noise start to swell. People are pulling of their cloaks and spreading them out in front for Jesus to walk on. Some people get the bright idea of pulling trees down and waving them about and putting them over the cloaks. Suddenly a whole stack of palm branches appear and are being waved about. The noise begins to turn from a soccer match rabble to an audible chorus of sound. The people are shouting verses from an old Psalm: “

Hosanna “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven and glory in the highest ”. Hosanna. (God save us)

Picture of ‘Triumphant Entry”. What’s wrong with this picture?

Palms and the Maccabean Rebellion

Selucid Dynasty (Greek/Syrian) Antiochus IV in 169 and 168 BC looted the temple to finance war campaigns, and outlawed Jewish practices like circumcision and not eating bacon. Then made the temple a temple for Zeus and sacrificed a pig on the altar!

Rebellion started, guerilla warfare, laser skirmish style.

164 BCs Judas Maccabeus entered temple took it back and rededicated temple, put in some palms. Palms became an icon of the revolution. Palms were held high when they eventually took over the citadel of Jesusalem. The coins that the Jews printed after this had palms fronds.

About 100 yrs later. The Jews lost power of their city again to the romans in 63BC. Now made a Roman province and Rome (big foreign occupying power) put in their own king to look after Jerusalem. The Jews not happy again. (Eventually led to a Revolt in 66 AD which they lost badly and Rome kicked out most of the Jews and completely destroyed the temple, as predicted by Jesus).

Waving palms when Jesus entered was like saying ‘Yeah we have our next warrior King who is going to wage war against these oppressive Romans and give us back our city by force’. Waving palms was Jewish code for rattling their swords and pickaxes! Or shooting off their rifles!

So what’s wrong with this picture? The crowds have got Jesus sooo wrong! Jesus was not going to be their champion superhero to save the day and sweep out all the baddies with firebolts from his fingers. No!

Jesus was there to be crucified, to be killed without a fight as a common criminal. In just 5 days this same crowd will be calling for Jesus to be crucified. Then Jesus, the great Messiah will be killed by his own people like a common criminal, tortured to death, for the sake of the worlds sins. 3 days later, its Easter Sunday, he will conquer death and appear to his disciples, feeding them fish and teaching them about what has happened.

And the reason WAS freedom, just as the crowd wanted on that palm Sunday. But not the Mel Gibson style “freedom” where people can go back to their comfortable way of life. But an inner freedom, freedom from sin, freedom from passing blame, freedom from guilt and freedom to live in the full and wonderful radiance of God. He was bringing peace to the world, an inner peace. Not war and selfish bloodshed. Jesus was calling us to be real and honest with our greatest needs. This was far more confronting for the Jews, even more so, was the fact that this freedom and peace was going to be available for the Roman oppressors AS WELL as the Jewish special people!

Now ultimately this is far more reason to celebrate and cheer than the prospect of another bloody war!

If Jesus was a Superhero, saving us from the baddies, we are never changed by that experience on the inside, Sure our circumstances change but as a person we are the same just waiting for the next superhero to come along to save us from the next baddy. It’s really just an unuals form of running away from the real problems. Just like the Jews who waved the palms, If Jesus came to kick out Romans, how long until the next army comes in to take over? Would anyone be really transformed by that experience?

If we forget about the palms and the Superheros we are left with Christ crucified, who transforms not our circumstances but our inner most being - we are changed (as the song says) from the inside out. So instead of magically solving all our problems Christ Crucified actually forces us to confront ourselves and deal with real issues.

By dying on the cross, then coming back to life the message from Christ crucified is that when you are reborn in Christ you become a child of God. We matter!

So once this transformation begins in us we can confront ourselves honestly and not be disgusted, instead we can be full of joy and thanksgiving. Because God is changing us, transforming us, replacing our worldly attitudes, and our worldly behaviours with kingdom attitudes and kingdom behaviours.

This is what we need to be excited about on palm Sunday.

Christ entering Jerusalem was the final culmination of his exhaustive and wonderful ministry. The next week is rollercoaster ride of emotion, leading upto the eventual death on a cross and glorious resurrection. The point of Jesus entering Jerusalem is ‘Christ crucified’, giving everyone, including you and me now! peace and release. We are no longer captive to our bad choices that lead us further and further away from goodness. Captive to the sorts of Attitudes and Behaviours we wish we didn’t have. We add the ‘D’ of lent turning from captive to captivated.

Captivated by Christ Crucified.

What would it look like for us to be captivated by Christ Crucified?

4 examples:

Mary’s annointing of Jesus. She came in amoungst all these important and powerful men, knowing she’d be hissed at and riducled and called a whore, YET she still emptied her life savings of perfume onto Jesus feet and wiped them with her hair. An act of love and intimacy that Jesus said would be remembered for all time. Mary was Captivated by Christ crucified.

Paul: A man who was transformed from a legalistic arrogant murderer of Christians to become one of the most inspiring lovers of Christ, the world has known. Read this: Phillipians 3:7-10. Paul was captivated by Christ crucified.

Jacob from big week out. One message, and one message only, which he would tell to leaders and kids and anyone else who would listen. That Jesus died on te cross so that my sins could be forgiven and we can live, refreshed in Christ. This guy was not a big emotional pot of tears, and he didn’t consider himself much of a public speaker, but everytime he talked about what Christ had done for us he would almost well up with glorious praise and thanks. Jacob is captivated by Christ crucified.

Tony Eldrige: who lectures on preaching and designing worship services, but who’s favourite part of the service, the part he lives for is the bit at the end of the prayer of confession, Minister says “Through Christ crucified your sins are forgiven, Thanks be to God” “Oh yes, thanks be to God”. Tony is captivated by Christ crucified.

Be Captivated by Christ Crucified.

This is my cry for us this palm Sunday.

To imagine we are right there just outside Jerusalem with Jesus about to enter. Imagine we lay down our cloaks but we don’t grab those palms, instead we take up our crosses and stand in awe, captivated by what Jesus is about to do for us. We have the advantage of hindsight. We know what Jesus is doing. We shout out

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven and glory in the highest ”.

So this Palm Sunday as we finish our lent series, lets all cheer Jesus for the right reasons.

The ‘C’ of lent, The Cross or Christ Crucified

2008-03-19T15:59:00.002+10:30

For the past 4 weeks we have been looking at the ‘A, B, C’s’ of lent. We have looked at Attitudes and Behaviours, with the idea of getting naked, or discarding certain attitudes and behaviours that get in between God and us. Then putting on or dressing up with attitudes and behaviours that God calls every one of us to have, to lead a truly good and holy life.

Now we get to the last two weeks, the big C of lent. Remembering we are leading up Easter can anyone guess what the big C is?

The Cross or to be more specific “Christ Crucified”, so its probably really two C’s. This phrase comes straight from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. 1 Cor 1:23 “Christ crucified”.

Christ crucified is the crux of Christianity, its the big crucial moment of all four gospels, in fact there is about as much written in the gospels about the events of Jesus death then there is about his life. The word ‘Crux’ is from the the latin word for cross. So when we say the crux of the mater is blah-de-blah. We’re actually saying “Just as the cross is central to Christianity, so is blah-de-blah central to this project!”.

So we’re starting to get the idea that this ‘C’ of lent (Christ crucified) is pretty big and important. In fact I could say that in the ABC of lent, CC is VVIP, OK?

When we think of Jesus Christ, what image do we have? Do we think of the Jesus that Thomas met in that locked house? The resurrected Jesus who still bears the scars of his crucifiction, the nail marks in his hands, the deep gash in his side? Or do we think of another sort of Jesus? What about when we pray? Which Jesus do we like to pray to?

[Talladega Knights]

Tonight this sermon is about stripping away our nice sanitary image’s of Christ and focussing on Christ crucified,

The Christ who died and rose again but still bears the marks of his crucifiction today. This is the Christ written about by Paul, and the Christ we meet at the end of the gospels.

So why is Christ crucified so important to us?

Well, we could each do a PhD on the subject and not finish answering the question, but ask anyone who’s just finished the Nicki Gumble Alpha course and the answer is that ‘Christ died to save us from our sins’, or as the KIDMO memory verse goes from John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.

Even though this message is well known, as Jono told me during the week, today most of us find this message offensive.

Even though this is a message of the power of God, life for all, a message of ultimate love from God for us, a message of release from darkness into light!

(As it says in the bible reading) In the wisdom of the world it is a message of foolishness, extreme offense.

Christ crucified, the Jesus we find at Easter is to be glossed over and wrapped up in pretty, coloured foil, delivered to us by the easter bunny, consumed and forgotten about, along with delicious frozen hot cross buns, within a week.

Why is it that we want to gloss over or even completely ignore Christ crucified?

You see the message that “Christ was crucified and died to save us from our sins” implies that we are all sinners, we have all done wrong things, some scholars would say we have all done things that bring evil into the world. Phil once defined sin as acts of ‘un-love’. This is the offence, how dare someone accuse me of doing wrong!

I don’t know about you but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing really wrong with me, apart from a bit bad luck and bad timing, ‘I’m doing ok thank you very much. Sure I may have made a few mistakes but deep down I’m good person’. In fact don’t we think this of most people?

To call someone or even our own self a sinner who needs saving seems just a tad too offensive.

Mistake. Its a funny word. Why do think we use that term ‘mistake’ when we’re really talking about sin?

To call something a mistake, is to treat as something we didn’t really mean to do, just one of those things, not really anything to do with me. We use mistake in place of choice. I think its symptomatic of a much bigger problem in the world. Which I’m going to explore now. The ‘Not My Fault’ problem.

The culture of blame where in Australian society, responsibility has been replaced with a new much more clever attitude to life: “When in doubt, blame someone else and sue for compensation.”

overlawyered.com has a swag of terribly depressing stories of this type of attitude gone stupid!

Here you find stories not just about Americans but Aussies too:

eg. see other notes

This ‘Ill sue you” culture is just one example of avoiding responsibility.

People use to get upset with the idea of God being a pupperter and were the puppets, but amazingly people these days are are quite happy to admit they are "made" to do things:

by their genes,

by their parents,

by their drugs (I did not sleep with that girl, "unless of course I was drunk at the time"),

by some superior being and,

by TV,

and by other people.

Everyone, it seems, has an excuse for bad behaviour - even serial adulterers, who can exchange their guilt for pity via "sex addiction".

Why do we do it? Why are we like this?

Why do we have culture of blame?

I think there’s two things:

1) Consequence of sin

Sin doesn’t just go away, if we ignore it or try and blame someone else! Just like our rubbish, it never disappears, but can clog up other parts of the world and create dumping grounds of extreme ugliness that can be seen by satellite. There are consequences, and it will catch up with us eventually.

My high school friends (Milan and Melanie). Seriousness of sin, there are consequences, for these friends of mine it has killed their life.

Cause and Effect

When it comes to sin or if I put it ‘injustice’ everyone would have this feeling that someone ought to pay. There needs to some consequence. If someone has stolen my new iPod, someone needs to pay. It’s Newtons law of motion: cause and effect. The trouble with current culture is that most people aren’t willing to accept that consequence, hence they try and shift the blame until someone pays. Ideally that someone is big, successful, influential and rich.

The herion addict who stole the iPod, blames his parents, his parents blame the school he went to, his school blames the pub and pokies down the road for supplying kids alcohol, illegally which lead to other drug-addictions,the pub blames the government for not providing enough protection for young people, the government hires clever lawyers to pass the blame again but secretly blame America for bringing their hip-hop culture to our shores etc etc..

Trouble is this isn’t really dealing with the real issue, it just ends up spreading more lies, more deceit and creating more rubbish for the world. It’s a vicious cycle: we sin, there are consequences of that sin, we don’t want these consequences so we try and pass them onto others, using blame and compensation, this just spreads and increases the original sin. Sin begets more sin.

Eventually, By not wanting to deal with the consequences we end up becoming slaves to our sin, captives to our ever growing rubbish pile.

The bible is pretty clear on what the consequences of sin are for us. Isaiah 59:2 Sins separate us from God, Read the story of Adam and Eve somtime and see the blame that goes on their, lauhgable, and the consequences.

[Genesis: Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, God said: eat from any tree but the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat it you will surely die.

As soon as they ate, they try and cover their nakedness, Gen 3:7-13, they try and hide, then they blame others. And then God in his love and justice, doesn’t do what a weak parent would have done ‘Ohh look okay it was a bit of mistake, and it was really the serpent, so lets just pretend it didn’t happen and count that as warning 1. Okay?’. God can’t ‘pretend’ it didn’t happen when it did. The fruit was eaten and things had changed.]

Sin in the bible always changes something. [For Adam and Eve the consequence of that was banishment from the garden, and death].

2) The world doesn’t know how to handle accepting blame.

Just like the world is struggling to handle its own mountains of rubbish. We don’t know how to handle accepting something as my fault, yes it was me, I did wrong, that is my sin, I am sorry. That is offensive!

We can’t stand the idea that it is ‘my fault’. Instead of standing tall, being honest with our sins, we run away and when cornered we blame. We are too scared of what the consequences of admitting guilt might lead too.

It seems like the world has forgotten the reason for the cross. We have forgotten that Christ died for our sins so that we finally have way of dealing with the consequences and we no longer need to blame. We can finally stop running and be honest!

We have remembered the baby Jesus but by glossing over Christ crucified, we have forgotten the only way we can actually deal with the horrible feelings inside that say ‘actually, yes, that wasn’t a mistake, I chose to do that, that was me’.

Lets go back to the text in 1 Corinthians:

It talks about the Greeks looking for wisdom and the Jews demanding miracles. They were both looking for the wrong thing. They were saying:

Greeks, look Jesus you’re really clever and we’re pretty clever too, soooo lets get together and work out how we can turn our pretty good life into a really cool life!

The Jew’s were saying look we’re in a spot of bother at the moment, as these Romans have kinda come in and taken over our city and dropped poo all over our once happy way of life, what say you do a little shebang-bang higgerty piggerty and get rid of them all for us? You know Moses parting of the red sea type stuff?

Trouble is they both forgot they were talking to Christ crucified. Jesus wasn’t interested in worldly wisdom or saving the Jews from the Romans, he was concerned in saving the people from themselves, in bringing them back to God, not away from the Romans.

This passage says that both Jews and Greeks and struggled with the same things we do now. They saw themselves as essentially good people, not in need of much change. They didn’t look to Jesus for salvation from their sins, they had hardly done any, and if they had it was someone else’s fault (eg. the Romans). They were in the age of wise men and philosphers, the age of intellegence. They’d didn’t need Christ for saving their sins but for his miracles and wisdom.

It’s no different from today. We seem to think we need Jesus more for his clever ethical teaching and his miracles then we do for saying sorry to about our sins.

Part of the foolishness of the cross is it provokes us all to say “Yes, it was my fault”.

Here’s the good news!

Christians don’t have to play the game with the rest of the world.

We have a way of dealing with our big mess-ups which are our own fault. AND it doesn’t involve spreading the mess further or escaping from the truth or even a lawyer.

Christ died like a common criminal for our ‘mistakes’. Christ finally, once and for all stuck his hand up in the midst of our hypocrosy and said ‘I will’, I will take responsibility for the actions of my beloved brothers and sisters. Even as we hurled insults and whips and stones at him he said, ‘Forgive them Father for they do not know they do”.

What we now are called to do is to face up to this Jesus Christ, the Christ that was crucified, and say “Yes Lord, that was me. I did it.” We say it honestly, with humility and remorse and with full knowledge of the proper consequences of our actions.

These consequences can be seen in the marks and wounds of Jesus, just as Thomas discovered himself. Someone has to take responsibility for the rubbish. And praise God, that through the wonderful love of God, Christ in pain and suffering releases us from the weight of that responsibility.

Take seriously and honestly our sin. Talk to Christ crucified in prayer and say “I’m sorry for this big mess up” Do as the tax collector did in Luke 18 v 13. that Jesus once spoke of who stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven but beat his breast and said. “God have mercy on me a sinner”.

Then because of God’s great love for us, we are forgiven through Christ crucfied. The consequences are dealt with, our burdens are taken away and we are finally free to live the life God created us for.

But let’s remember the consequences of our sin are dealt with by Christ crucified not the baby Jesus, or the Ninja Jesus, or even the good moral yoda Jesus. Its the Jesus that died and rose again. So if we ignore this Jesus, then we’re also saying ‘Yes’ to carrying around more and more rubbish, we’re saying ‘yes’ to being trapped in the blame game and we’re saying ‘yes’ to the consequences of our own injustices. But start talking to Christ crucified and we’re saying ‘yes’ to God’s love, yes to dealing with our rubbish, and yes to bringing light and life to our world.

so tell me

2008-03-05T12:28:00.002+10:30

whats been hapening for all of you out there in church/blog land?
how has lent been? i am wonderin if people have really stuck to their lenten disciplines or if they have just been a bit to hard. Personally i have never given anything up for Lent, its not that i don't want to its just that i have never seen it as an important part of my spirituality. But what do others think? any comments any suggestions for me?
Jonathan

24.2.08 Behavior – those things we need to take off. Malvern@6

2008-02-25T15:53:00.001+10:30

Tonight in our series of the abc’s of lent we are talking about behavior.
Remember clothes – its these behaviors that we take off. And the behaviors that we put on that really matter and its what others see. We communicate Jesus by what others see, they see our attitudes and they see our behavior.
Comes after attitudes because often our attitudes (or what we think) sets how we act. Not always but mostly.
Here are some descriptions I found on the internet of behavior as seen by employers;
· "Since my last report, this employee has reached rock-bottom and shows signs of starting to dig."
· "His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity."
· "I would not allow this employee to breed."
· "This associate is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definitely won't be."
· "Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."
· "When he opens his mouth, it seems that this is only to change whichever foot was previously in there."
· "He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle."
· "This young man has delusions of adequacy."
· "He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."
· "This employee should go far-and the sooner he starts, the better."
· "This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."
Behavior is an indicator of what is going on inside us. It tells us what people think about a certain circumstance. So for instance when you go to a crows port match you don’t even need to see any colures all you need to do to find out who barracks for who is to watch the behavior.
Behavior is very important in our culture. We often use such phrases as unacceptable behavior, dysfunctional behavior, bad behavior, erratic behavior. If you continue in what society says is bad behavior sooner or later you are going to end up as a guest of her majesty for varying amounts of time. Society see’s behavior as a reflection of who you are.
Now when we turn our attention to the bible there is a whole lot more for us to think about. God understands that behavior is something that sets us apart and something that is important for us as followers of Jesus. The Bible then is actually very explicit with behaviors and has things that are important for us to be mindful of. The Old Testament was full of behavior requirements, so for instance the ten commandments and all the deuteronomic law and the livitical law. This told the children of Israel what God expected of them as a holy people and a people who were meant to reflect God. Now this didn’t work to well as humanity soon found out that will power alone is not enough to produce good behavior. Much of our behavior is socially set so, when the children of Israel saw other nations doing strange cultic practices they just wandered away and were easily seduced into ungodly behavior. And God wasn’t happy!
But you see something happened when Jesus came. Jesus did a work in our hearts that allowed us to have more than just will power to overcome our behavioral issues. Jesus gives us a new heart. A heart that is assisted to follow God. Now I need to talk with you about this at great length but not right now! All I need to say is that Jesus actually gives us the tools to change our behavior. No longer do we have to just rely on our will power but we are at full liberty to ask Jesus for his help. Jesus does this through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I can only tell you this because he has been doing it in mine!
When I encourage you to pray, I am not just suggesting that you should only pray for the sick people in the world or world poverty. But what I want you to do is to open your heart to the work of the Spirit and pray for yourself that you might now where the HS is wanting to change you into the image of Jesus.
And this really is the bottom line when we talk about Behavior as a Christian. Our behavior is modeled on Jesus and nothing else. In fact we must reject anything else!
Tonight I want to suggest 3 things that we need to take off. 3 overall principles that are important for us to grapple with in living with integrity and uprightness. 3 behaviors that we must deal with if we are to be a Jesus person. Now a Jesus person is someone who lives life like we are intended, they live life in the way we were made. This isn’t something that I have just made up, but something that is tried and tested by thousands of generations who have followed Jesus and who have found meaning and purpose beyond that of anyone else. This is not an easy way to live life, actually if you want an easy way then don’t follow Jesus. Do something else, wrestle a tiger or compete in a marathon or read the entire internet. Following Jesus is like what the hilltop hoods say its the hard road. And when we come to behaviors its an obvious indicator of whether you are on the hard road or not.
First let me read the important bits from psalm 1.
Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 they are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers.
4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
The psalm tells us three things in the opening verse about behavior. So lets work our way through them.
Culture
The first behaviour has to do with what the bible says is “walking in the counsel of the wicked”. Now I am sure that doesn’t make much sense to you but just give it a moment, because its actually quite obvious. When you walk with someone its like you share the road with them, essentially you go the same direction as they do. So for instance your mum says do you want to go for a walk with me means literally that both of you are going in the same direction. Unless your mum says you go to the video store and I will go and get some milk, she is expecting you to go with her in the exact same direction. Try and do otherwise!
Now, if you are a follower of Jesus how can you go in the same direction as people who are not? If you follow Gods plan for your life then how can you be in harmony with someone who just wants to do their own thing all the time?
Have you ever tried to walk with a dog that has wanted to go another way? Have you ever had a dog on a lead that wants to go off all the time to the side sniffing and smelling crossing the path in front of you! What happens is that your legs become tangled up in the lead and you end up falling over!
This is what will happen to a Christian who tries to follow the same course of a non Christian.
What I am trying to communicate to you in this point relates to the direction of your life and the behaviours that are associated with that. There are forces trying to pull you towards a different way. The drag of culture on your life should not be underestimated. Culture has a huge influence on your behaviour.
We are strongly influenced by the direction of society and the trends that we see.
So immediately that tells us we cannot act and behave the same as everyone else around us. We don’t follow advice that seems right for everyone else. If you follow Jesus then you are different than the rest. Its not enough to be a nice person. Nice people don’t always walk Gods ways.
So what does this look like?
· We should not have common morals – God calls us a holy people, that means we act in a right manner, we get our morals from the new testament and not from desperate house wives or Nova – you know what I mean (maybe another day I will speak at some length on this)
· We do not have an ordinary emphasis on money.
· We treat people differently – we don’t use or abuse or manipulate, we are careful with our words.
· We eliminate the attitudes of fear, or despair or unthankfulness.
We take off the walk of the person who does not follow Jesus in order to put on the one that does. Our actions reflect who we serve and not culture.
Influence
The second thing that the psalm says to us is this” Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners

So the Psalm says that we don’t stand in the way of sinners. Again this sounds complicated. But lets thing about it like this, Not only do we not follow in the direction of everyone else but we don’t make it our habit to reside in a place where un-Christlike behaviour is endorsed. This is about the habits we foster in our lives and the people we let form those habits. Now I am not saying that we should give up our friends that don't hold to the same world view that we do. I am not saying that at all. Actually I am saying the opposite. Be with your friends, hang around them, love them support them enjoy them, go to their parties, laugh when they get drunk, and tickle their babies.
But what I do think the bible is saying is be careful of their influence in your life.
Let me illustrate it like this; when you were growing up your mum and dad would have set the agenda for your life (well mostly). So by and large you thought like they did, the things that were important to them were things that were important for you. In my upbringing books were important. Go into my office now and you will see it full of books – I love them. I love them because I was taught to love them, my parents influence rubbed off on my. The same is true for the company you keep. If you are not careful their priorities will become your priorities.
Suzie and I have been on a health kick for about 12 months; our kids have imbibed that and are now very discerning when it comes to putting things in their mouth! Its amazing the influence you have over people.
As followers of Jesus we need to analyse and be real about those influences our company have on us. We have to put off like a coat those unhelpful behaviours that come from the friends we keep. We need to stop letting their lives influence ours.
Now for some of us this means we actually need to find new friends. But for most of us we need to stop following our friends advice that leads us away from Jesus. The bible says ‘Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil for good’. In other words you are the ones who should be influencing your friends. Now again this is not something that you have do to alone. The HS give us the energy to do this and to make this happen in our lives.
The behaviour that we need to take off looks something like this;
· All our friends are watching a DVD or internet that we know is not healthy for our Christian life. We should leave.
· Our friends are involved in something dodgy.
· There is constant backstabbing and pulling down of a member of the group when they are not there.
· The group picks on one person all the time.
· The norm is to drink heavily, smoke strangely, drug stupidly and drive recklessly.
You know what I am talking about. Don’t let that behaviour pull you down, because it ends up in nowhere road. Take those practices of. By the power of the HS be the positive influence.

Person

Finally the Bible says
Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.

So the last image the bible gives us is sitting in the seat of mocker. Again we need to think about this one. I think what it means is that we don’t resign ourselves to our fate. What I suggest by that is if we have some bad behaviour in our life. Some things of which we are aware, we don’t just let them sit and ignore them.
God calls us to so much more than where we are presently – and that is true for all of us. We don’t let ourselves remain in bad behaviour. We don’t sit with it, we don’t just let it all happen around us, but we get up and do something about it. Now some might say well that’s easy for you to say Jono but it’s a bit harder for me. Well, you know each of us have our own struggle in our own particular area. But this is one area that we have to really work hard at getting off.
Behaviours that have been part of our life quickly become habits. And habits are hard to shift.
But if you want to be a mature person then you must deal with the destructive habits of your life. If you want to develop and be the person that God intended then you have got to stop making excuses and get rid of the negative behaviour that is dragging you down.
You see God does not want us to be passive but to be proactive about our spirituality! He calls us to be involved in the world and to bring about change, not to sit in a place of self pity and denial. God wants to use you with his mission but not when you have all this negative stuff going on inside of you. The things of culture and the influences of our friends can cause us to be crippled to the things of God. But God says I have given you the gift of the HS but its up to you to want to change and move and mature.
So what exactly am I talking about, well let me name some that I think are a problem;
Some of us have made a habit out of drinking that will get out of control.
Some of us need to stop thinking about ourselves so much and begin to see what other needs there are in the world.
Some of us need to get our use of language under control
Some of us need to stop making excuses about why we are what we are and get on with it.
Some of us need to stop spending on ourselves.
Some of us have to take responsibility for our own actions.
Some of us need to be consistent in our devotional life (every day) and faithful in our worship (every week)
A man walking through the forest saw a fox that had lost its legs, and he wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come up with game in its mouth. The tiger ate its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox.
The next day God fed the fox by means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at God's greatness and said to himself, "I took shall rest in a corner with full trust in the Lord and he will provide me with all that I need."
He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death's door when he heard a voice say, "O you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth. Stop imitating the disabled fox and follow the example of the tiger."
Sometimes there are more tigers here than in the Indian jungle. Its time we got up and got going.
Let me finish by saying this.
Behaviours come at a variety of levels. But its time to get wise to their impact on our lives and to behave more like Jesus. Jesus is the right way to live life. The right way to act, the right way to be. Remember you are a child of the king, its time to throw off all those things that aren’t consistent with that.

positive attitudes - dude!

2008-02-18T12:49:00.001+10:30

Last week we focused on negative attitudes that symbolically we wear around like clothing. Fear, ingratitude and despair are three articles of clothing that we could all do without wearing. To be free we need to get those things off and get them out of our life.
(Like the truck we followed on Friday) They are like a bad smell hanging around us.
Tonight we concentrate on the opposite of these negative attitudes and we begin to think about how to live them in our life. How to live them out in our day to day activity.
As with many things our mind decides our attitudes - If you look at things through a negative perspective you will see negative things. If you look at things through a positive attitude you will see positives.
The bible describes these attitudes to be like clothes. Its the things that we put on to our lives. Things that have a lasting effect on ourselves but also on others as well.
These three things that are the topic of our discussion tonight are kingdom values. When I say kingdom values I mean things that Jesus endorses. Its elements of life that Jesus sees as important and wants to foster in his people. Its Gods way in our life.
Kingdom values are also the best way to live life. So if you follow a kingdom way of living then you are going to be living in the best possible manner. Actually – living in the way that you were intended! And when Jesus returns again – and make no mistake he will return – these values, this way of living with be an everyday event. Just like air.
So the three things that form tonight's topic are; faith, thankfulness and hope.
Faith
We do things by faith all the time. The internal combustion engine is an act of faith! Every time I go online a pay a bill or buy something it’s an act of faith. Getting to work on time is an act of faith. Who here knows what you are going to do tomorrow? - Planning for tomorrow is an act of faith!
We use faith all the time, every day. We operate by faith – if you really stop and think about it. We take it for granted.
But a spiritual attitude for faith well that’s something entirely different! Let me tell you what the bottom line of spiritual faith is and why it’s opposite to fear (which was last week).
An attitude of faith leads us to live our life in expectancy that all things are in God’s hands and that we can trust him.
Now when you read the bible its clear that there are two sources when it comes to faith
God gives you faith. Some people have the gift of faith – that is they can see what is yet to be put in place. They understand how God is working and can see his actions before they happen.
But also that faith is something you develop on your own. Most of us are asked to believe that God is good to his word. – it seems to me that there is enough information about God to believe if you want to or not enough information to doubt if you want to. Faith is trusting that God has you in his hand.
This is why it’s opposite to fear, because fear narrows down whereas faith opens up. Fear says its all ending and faith says it’s just the beginning. Fear doesn’t trust but faith does.
So how do you foster faith as a garment as an attitude in your life?
Moses on the mountain – cover your face. When you have been with Jesus then you will look like him. You cannot have faith in God unless you know God.
Use what you have got – so trust in a small circumstance that God has got your best interest at heart and go with that.
Faith does increase – like exercise.
Surround yourself with people who have got it and read stories of those who have great faith.
Consciously be asking him every day to see further than the rest. To look at life and circumstance with the eyes of faith.
When you live life out of faith, it is different because most people live life out of fear! And others will see and they will ask you what is going on in your life for you to be like that. And then you will be able to tell them about the one you have faith in. and it’s so simple. I have faith in Jesus because he has never let me or my family down and he has made so much sense of my life. I don’t have to be fearful, even though there is much to be afraid of.
Consciously wear the attitude of faith and see what happens this week – you will notice the difference.
Thankfulness
The second point - thankfulness
As I pointed out last week society is not too good with thankfulness. Thankfulness cuts across consumerism – and boy oh boy are we in love with consumerism! We love stuff, we love buying stuff, the more the better. Not many are thankful for what they have already got.
A survey done on mature Christians that identify thankfulness as a key component of their spirituality. That is mature well developed Christians are thankful people – they are satisfied with their lot in life and respond out of that to an extent that it shows. Not only are they thankful people they are happy and contented. And that’s something that many people would like to have. The more they try and find it with money the more it eludes them.
Not many people even say thank you these days. Many just expect. Do you find that? Do you find yourself expecting things because they are your right? That’s opposite to an attitude of thankfulness. And attitude of thankfulness says that everything is a gift from God, to be enjoyed, appreciated and treasured. Not taken for granted.
Marriage the prime example of thankfulness.
An attitude of thankfulness is living life seeing that all things come from the hand of God and that even thought we think we might not have enough we actually have all we need.
How do you foster an attitude of thankfulness in your life?
Only buy what you need not what you want – figuring out the difference in that is important.
The old %10 rule for tithing is actually important. You should give that much away every week.
Stop looking at catalogues and TV adds that promote buying.
Help out at a homeless shelter.
Join the mission group at church.
Subscribe to something like the voice of the martyrs or similar to see how many other Christians live.
Ask God to open your eyes so that you might really see what is important (and this is the bottom line – thankfulness sees what is important and cuts away the rest – don’t you want to see what is important in life?!)

The third piece of clothing or attitude is the biggie – hope.
Hope
Do not think that hope is some sort of wishful thinking that is based more in fantasy than reality. Hope deals with the tangible.
The dictionary says that hope is; to yearn for something with expectation of its fulfilment. Faith says I believe that can happen, hope says I know that can happen.
Hope says that what we see is not the full reality but that there is more to come, so much more in fact that if we were to catch a glimpse we would be blown away by its full impact. Hope belongs in the realm of the supernatural and deals with the mystery of God who brings new things out of the old.
An attitude of hope does not let the present circumstance dictated the terms but tells us that life is more than ten and 3 score years. Hope laughs in the face of death. Hope is underscored by the God of the resurrection! And hope is powerful stuff. Underrated and undefeatable.
If you have ever cared to watch any move with a good guy against a whole stack of bad guys you will see the theme of hope. Western comics always the theme of hope. That in desperate time’s good will always win out against evil, that all the wrongs will be righted, that out of destruction salvation emerges.
The world knows about hope but doesn’t know how to access it. And so it becomes more and more filled with despair.
The church is in the hope business. We of all people ought to be known most for our hope; because our hope is founded on something deeper than human ability or wishful thinking. Martin Luther King was fond of citing a distinction between hope and optimism. Optimism believes in progress; that circumstances will get better. Hope, however, is built on the conviction that another reality, another Kingdom, already exists. And so hope endures when hype fades.
Psychologist Martin Seligman, though not religious himself, notes that not only does faith produce hopeful people, but more robust faith produces more robust hope. A great hoper known as Julian of Norwich sang her song from the depths of the Black Plague-infested fourteenth century:
But all shall be well,And all shall be well,And all manner of things shall be well…He did not say, "You shall know no storms, no travails, no disease,"He said, "You shall not be overcome."
How do we develop an attitude of hope?
· Stand fast to what you know is the truth – and get your truth from the most reliable of sources – the bible. Hope says everything will be made right in the end.
· Lady in I am Legend – its so quiet now, you can hear God’s voice. Get to a quiet place to hear his voice. Learn to hear the hope.
· Seek every day to find that other kingdom among the ordinary. What I mean is that God is working in your life and in the lives of those around you – it’s up to us to perceive the hope for today.

What is at stake for us not to do these things? What happens if we don’t foster these attitudes in our lives? Well to some extent we remain like that stinking garbage truck, we remain filled with fear, and ingratitude and despair and in a sense we are not really very nice to be around. The bible says that we are the aroma of Christ to those who are dying. In other words we are attractive because the people who are on the look out for a different way can sense that in us. And that’s what God has called us to do. He has called us to be saved, be renewed and then to tell others about it. We tell others how they can live life well, how they can be free, how they can be saved from all the fear and despair that’s all around. That’s what we have got to do. That’s why its so important to take off our old clothes and put on these new ones. To replace our attitudes with kingdom ones. To take away our old corrupt selves, the full part of us that stinks and get Gods new way of living. And in doing that others will be impacted and see that this Jesus thingo is not just some fad but makes a huge difference in how we live our lives and how we perceive the world.
You must not be deluded to the fact that God is working in us for a reason. God wants to transform us so that we can witness to his work in our lives and so that we can be examples of people who live like they are in the kingdom. There are so many others who need to hear and see and sense this change and you and I are called to be the ones who do that.
God doesn’t want you to be a nice person. God doesn’t want you to be a good church goer or a model citizen. God wants you to be a radical transformed agent for his mission in this world. A living example of how someone in the hands of a holy loving God can be renewed and live differently.
The way you live in respect to your attitudes has a direct bearing on how you influence others around you. Its time to get your attitudes in order so that God can use you for his mission in this world. Don’t play with it, don’t baulk at it. Its time to step up to the plate. Get serious about growing faith, fostering thankfulness and living out of hope. Get serious about knowing the one who makes all these things possible. Get serious about the negative influence of the world or stop playing with the kingdom.
God is calling soldiers to join the ranks. Are you ready to join your attitudes to Gods, to be under his orders? If so the time is now. Pull on your boots, get rid of the old stuff and lets all follow Jesus.
Faith, thankfulness and hope are the areas to work in.

THE ABC'S OF LENT

2008-02-11T13:36:00.000+10:30

Tonight we are going to get naked for Jesus. Actually Josh gave me that line and I thought it would get your attention!
I want to talk about taking things off for lent. Next week we will talk about putting things on for lent. Specifically I want to talk tonight about attitudes. And as we role into the season of lent its worth thinking about what is it that we can do without. And what is it that we need.
Wicky says that ‘Many Christian consider the observation of Lent to be a choice, rather than an obligation. They may decide to give up a favorite food or drink (e.g. chocolate, alcohol) or activity (e.g. going to the movies, playing video games) for Lent, or they may instead decide to take on a Lenten discipline such as devotions, volunteering for charity work, and so forth.’
But I want to push us further than chocolate and coffee! Chocolate is not the biggest danger that many of you are going to face and I don’t think that coffee is hazardous to your spiritual health! Should there be more to Lent than just this?
So what would Jesus say to us about our attitudes? Actually if we care to look for a few minutes through the Bible we can see that Jesus says a fair bit! The be-attitudes!
So tonight I want to challenge you about putting off some attitudes that are not what Jesus would endorse. Its time to get naked for Jesus!
Your dictionary.com says that Attitude is a doing word, ‘a manner of acting, feeling, or thinking that shows one's disposition, opinion, etc.’
It’s a bit like this joke that Guy gave me during the week
A woman was at work when she received a phone call that her daughter was very sick with a fever. She left her work and stopped by the pharmacy to get some medication. She got back to her car and found that she had locked her keys in the car.
She didn't know what to do, so she called home and told the baby sitter what had happened. The baby sitter told her that her fever was getting worse. She said, "You might find a coat hanger and use that to open the door."
The woman looked around and found an old rusty coat hanger that had been thrown down on the ground, possibly by someone else who at some time or other had locked their keys in their car. Then she looked at the hanger and said, "I don't know how to use this."
So she bowed her head and asked God to send her some help. Within a couple of minutes an old rusty car pulled up, with a dirty, grimy, bearded man who was wearing an old biker skull rag on his head. The woman thought, "This is what you sent to help me?" But, she was desperate, so she was also very thankful.
The man got out of his car and asked her if he could help. She said, "Yes, my daughter is very sick. I stopped to get her some medication and I locked my keys in my car. I must get home to her. Please, can you use this hanger to unlock my car?"
He said, "Sure". He walked over to the car, and in a few seconds the car was opened. She hugged the man and through her tears she said, "Thank You So Much! You are a very nice man."
The man replied, "Lady, I am not a nice man. I just got out of prison today. I was in prison for car theft and have only been out for about a day."
The woman hugged the man again and with sobbing tears cried out loud, "Oh, Thank you God! You even sent me a Professional!"
Now that’s an attitude I would like to have! Next week I will tell you what to put on but for now
There are 3 Attitudes that we need to put off.
Fear, lack of appreciation and Despair
Listen to what the bible says about this from Ephesians 4:22-24 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (some translations say cloth yourself).
Let me talk about fear
The greatest enemy of faith is not doubt; one of the greatest enemy of faith is fear. Most of the world is controlled by fear. Petty fears control people; great fears control nations. We could feed all the people in this world if we would stop building arms, but we are afraid.
Fear is rampant in the world. The Americans in particular are entering into an age of fear. But we aussies aren’t immune from it. A lot of our current attitudes come out of the database of fear. I think I have spoken to you before about what fences that people are constructing around there houses tell us.
Fear immobilizes us. It makes us unable to live the way we were intended. It makes us react instead of respond – do you see the difference.
Living with an attitude of fear is like only living half a life. It’s like only driving your car in first gear (the other day while driving to work. Living with an attitude of fear hampers your ability to do what you were made to do. Fear says that’s to risky to undertake and so it stops your heart from reaching out.
One of the controlling factors of western society – since 9/11 has been fear. And you, all of us have felt the impact of it. And the media knows it. Boy have they made a lot of news and a heap of money out of this gospel of fear! They know how to sell this message so that each one of us has a good measure of fear inside of us and we become addicted to finding out from them (the media) what things we should be fearful about. They know that if they can push that fear button then they stand to make a bucket load of cash.
Fear has got us trapped in its vice.
An attitude of fear looks something like this;
· There is a voice inside your head telling you that ‘they’ are out to get you and its not safe - even when you have no evidence to the contrary.
· Its when you can picture bad, violent things happening to your family and yourself. And you start to worry about it.
· Its when you hear a story on the news about a horrific crime and you find yourself agreeing that these things are just sooo much more common these days.
· Its when you treat everyone with suspicion
When you find yourself responding out of a fearful attitude that’s when you know its permeated your life and its something we need to get rid off. We have to remove its influence from our lives because it controls us.
Next week I will give you the antidote to fear – so you have to come next week, but let me remind you right now what the gospel says to an attitude of fear it says perfect love drives out all fear. In other words the presence of God does not leave room for fear. When God is present, fear is gone.
We must choose God over fear. We must listen to what the gospel says and refuse to be controlled by fear. Now you can have fear inside of you but when you choose to act despite it that’s when you are not operating out of fear. I know that this is a deep issue but you can choose to not let it control you and your actions.

The next attitude that I believe we need to have a think about is ingratitude, or living with an unthankful mindset.
The old story goes that always pulls me up short goes like this; I was unhappy because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.
Living with un-thankfulness in our heart means that we are always wanting more and we are never satisfied with what we have. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t want to go through life like that. God has blessed us with so much. We have the benefit of so many resources, so many good things.
And I will not let us be corrupted by the rampant consumerism that is destroying our nation. This afluenza is driven by our inability to be thankful for what we have. There is currently an inability in society to ever be content. Don’t let it fool you. Don’t retain the attitude that says more and more is better! That you have to have the newest and the latest. I know the pressure that comes on us to be like this. I feel its pull every single day. But don’t let it bring this disease into your life. Because if we sell out to the attitude of wanting more an more and being un happy with what we have then we simply prostitute ourselves before the temple of stuff. We are slaves to the culture.
Lets begin this lent to discover what we really have. To understand the riches of our circumstance and to rail against the trend of consumerism.
Maybe some of us should think about this;
· Don’t by anything new this season of lent!
· Don’t use eBay until Easter.
· Make a mental note of what we actually have and use in a single day
· For the next week do some research on a disadvantaged group either here or abroad.
· And give away %20 of your income to the church or to directly benefit someone disadvantaged.
If you can or cannot do that would be a good litmus test to see just how much we have sold out to culture.
Living with ingratitude is pulling us down. Its making our lives unhappy, and its leaving us dissatisfied with life.
The simple fact that we are not thankful is harming us. And we have got to get rid of it.
The last thing that I want to talk about taking off for lent is despair.
This, my friends is a big problem. This is something that has got us in its grip like a vice and does not want to let us go.
Despair does not factor in Gods involvement in the world. To despair, when you truly believe that here is no hope, is a very ugly place to be. If you have know anybody who has despaired then you will know what I mean. We must ferret it out and not let it take any ground in our lives.
An attitude of despair says that there is no way out of a problem. It says that God has deserted us and we are doomed.
We hear it all the time in things like ‘I am a failure’ I am hopeless, no one will like me. And we get to see it all the time in the lives of the A list. Heath Ledger is the current example. Despair destroys and shuts down life.
We despair that a situation will ever change; we give up on the notion that God will ever be able to change our world. And in doing so we join in with the rest of humanity and only see what is right in front of us rather than seeing with the eyes of faith that God has given us.
And we let these things conquer over us!
You see its in that moment of absolute struggle, in the context of that hardship that Gods way emerges, if we don’t give up, if we retain hope.
Think about this for a moment. It was Friday and Jesus had been crucified, it was Saturday and Jesus was still dead, but boy oh boy these days turned to Sunday and what a Sunday it was. You see we are not Friday people – even though everyone else is, we are not Saturday people, even though some others are. We see beyond these two events and become Sunday people. Sunday where despair turns to hope and a hope that does not disappoint us.
Even in the midst of struggle despair is not for the people of God.
After having dug to a depth of 10 metres last year, Scottish Archaeologistsfound traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusionthat their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 yearsago.Not to be outdone by the Scots, in the weeks that followed Englishscientists dug to a depth of 20 metres, and shortly after, headlines in theUK newspapers read: "English Archaeologists have found traces of 200 yearold copper wire and have concluded that their ancestors already had anadvanced high-tech communications network a hundred years earlier than theScots."One week later, "The Kerryman," a southwest Irish newsletter, reported thefollowing: "After digging as deep as 30 metres in peat bog near Tralee,Paddy O'Droll, a self taught Archaeologist, reported that he foundabsolutely nothing. Paddy has therefore concluded that 300 years agoIreland had already gone wireless."
Its time for us to get rid of these perverse attitudes of fear, ingratitude and despair. Its time to stop being like everyone else. Its time to respond in the freedom that God gives us.
My prayer for you this lent is that you will discard the things that don’t matter and put on the things that do.

christmas time...

2007-12-12T14:07:00.000+10:30

well its really with us - christmas. its funny how for so long christmas is a distant memory from the past of something that is way off in the future. but now its here! this time in two weeks it will be over! for me this is a lot like our faith / that is, its something that is off in the future or was a past experience. what chrismtas reminds me of is the fact that Jesus is here NOW with us. we dont' have to wait but we can connect with him all the time. i suppose this is really the meaning of Immanuel - God with us. not just a Christmas phenominan (how do you spell that word??) but a true reality all through the year.
i hope you can connect with Jesus now and throughout the whole of the new year.
Jonathan

picnic in the wind and the cold and the park

2007-11-26T14:20:00.000+10:30

ok, well finally the election is over! thank goodness. i was so sick of all the stuff and the carry on. my mail box at home was just so full of all this recycling - i gotta tell you that i didn't open most of it but i just 'filed' it in my nice handy green filing cabinet. this really nice man comes along once a fortnight and collects all the filing. i suppose that if i ever want anything i would just ask him and he would bring it back for me... not that i have ever asked for anything back mind you, well not for lots of years now! ;-)
so how was your weekend? we had a picnic afa Church on Sunday night. it was really great - apart from the fact it was about 2 degrees with the wind. I'm just not prepared for all that cold as we head towards summer. but seriously, its just so important to get together and be church not just talk about it. it means so much if we actually take the time to connect, to listen and to laugh together. this is a big theme that i would like to explore some more.
what do others think? how do you see us as a church doing community??what would real community look like for you?
well more on that later...!
Jono

ok so its time to get back to it

2007-11-19T23:13:00.000+10:30

well, its been a really long time since i last made a blog! shame on me... but i aim to mend my ways.
i am wondering what sort of things i should be blogging about? i mean do you want ot hear about my life? or my thoughts on life? do you want to know about carpentry or what it is like to drive an old Hilux Ute? actually there are so many topics i don't quite know where to begin.

how about the election, i don't know about you but i am really looking forward to all the who ha being finished and done with! it seems to be going on and on and on - you get the point? i wonder what God thinks of all the carry on? i saw a whole stack of signs defaced along Goodwood rd the other day and i thought that we are becoming like those americans - all fanatical and stuff. soon there will be people marching down my street with plackards telling me what to do - heaven forbid. anyway i hope it will be soon over, for all of our sakes.
talk soon.
J

Important...

2007-05-08T20:35:00.000+09:30

i think it's fairly important to share your faith with other people. everybody is given different kinds of gifts from god, but if we put our gifts together, and work together, we can do more!

who has been thinking what...

2007-04-20T16:03:00.000+09:30

well its been some time since the last post. how have things been with you? thanks for all those who have commented on what has been posted here on this blog. its good to see that others think about their faith as well!
latley i have been wondering lots of things! but most of all i have been thinking about what it means to share your faith with someone else. any thoughts on this?? if so let me know and i would love to talk about it.

miracles, miracles, miracles

2007-03-08T09:23:00.000+10:30

Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me? Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father" (John 10:31-32, 37-38)
Do you believe in miracles? I do. I don't believe that everything called a miracle really is a miracle. In fact, I've been disappointed more than once with something or someone who faked a miracle. But miracles happen all around us every day. Some of the miracles are super-extraordinary; others, like a sunset, the human body or the true love of a man and woman, have become so ordinary that we hardly call them a miracle even though that's exactly what they are.
What is a miracle? A miracle makes an opening in the wall that separates this world and another. A miracle is a wonder, a beam of God's supernatural power injected into history. A miracle is a happening that cannot be explained in terms of ordinary life.
Christ performed at least thirty-five miracles in the Bible: walking on water, healing the sick, multiplying loaves and fish, turning water into wine, and even raising the dead.
Why did Christ perform so many miracles? Did he do it to persuade the people of his power or to solidify their faith? Did he do miracles to dramatically show that God took an interest in his creation? The answer is a simple "yes." Jesus performed miracles in order to give God glory. Perhaps the greatest miracle was the fact that Jesus (the Word) became flesh and dwelt among us. He is the visible expression of the invisible God.
God doesn't always perform miracles at our every petition, but don't underestimate his power either. Next time you seek a miracle, don't forget, he is not a magician - but don't be surprised if his miracle is greater than you ever imagined.
[Jim Burns posted 13 July 2004 in Daily Devotional by YouthBuilders.com]

does Jesus love Osama?

2007-02-02T08:50:00.000+10:30

well one church in Sydney has put out on their sighn board that Jesus Loves Osama. it certainly makes you think! have A look and tell me what it evoked for you.

http://www.journeyonline.com.au/showArticle.php?categoryId=1&articleId=854]

Jonathan

Hmmm...

2007-01-24T09:37:00.000+10:30

i found this wile surfing the other day;

We always seem to hear the plaintiff cry of teenagers - what can we do, where can we go we're bored. And the answer is? Go home! Wash the windows, paint the woodwork, rake the leaves, scrub some floors, repair the sink, wash the car, learn to cook, build a boat, get a job, visit the sick, assist the poor, study your lessons and then when you are finished and not tired, read a book.
Your town does not owe you recreation facilities, your parents do not owe you entertainment and the world does not owe you a living.
You owe the world something. You owe it your time, energy and talents, so that no one will be at war, or in poverty or sick or lonely again. In plain, simple words, grow up: stop being a cry baby, get out of your dream world, develop a backbone, not a wishbone, and start acting like a man or a woman.
What you are, God gave you. What you become, give to God.
Australia needs your help for survival. You are important and you are needed.
It is too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something someday. Some day is now and somebody is you!
[Passed on by a friend. Author unknown]

Jono

This is Church!

2006-12-06T11:06:00.000+10:30

this is what another radical Church is up to at Christmas time... its gotta make you think!
have a look at it and post a response-

http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006611270306

Christmas and all that stuff

2006-12-06T10:44:00.000+10:30

So what’s the deal guys?
I mean who can escape the Christmas downward spiral? As I drove out to work this morning our mail box was already overflowing with junk mail. And yesterday they had to shove it into the fence as the box was so full! Talk about a bombardment to spend!
So what do we do to survive this time of year? What do we do to make it more of a sacred time rather than an economic explosion?

The other night I went to see the new move The Nativity Story. If I was to tell the truth I would have rather seen Borat or Casino Royal but I thought why not, so me and Mrs sat in this huge theatre with 5 other people. It wasn’t long though before I was lost in the movie – it was very captivating. No special effects, no wiz bang stuff, just a very down to earth depiction of those months leading up to Jesus’ birth. Actually I found it rather moving.
Has anybody else seen it? What did you think about it?

A Christmas Prayer

2006-12-04T15:29:00.000+10:30

Loving Father, Help us remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and worship of the wise men.

Close the door of hate
and open the door of love all over the world.
Let kindness come with every gift
and good desires with every greeting.
Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings,
and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.

May the Christmas morning make us happy to be thy children,
and Christmas evening bring us to our beds
with grateful thoughts,forgiving and forgiven,
for Jesus' sake.
Amen.

by Robert Louis Stevenson

chunky stuff

2006-12-01T16:46:00.000+10:30

well, i have just had a very interesting conversation today about God, the Church, Israel, justice, who is saved and who isn't! yep my brain is still spinning from all the thoughts that happend to pass through it...
some of us are going to meet next time to discuss the issue of sin. Yep talk about picking off the hard ones first!
anyway if you would like to join in then send me an email and i will tell you where and when...
J

acticle worth reading

2006-11-23T09:23:00.000+10:30

Hi Friends,
found this article and thought you might like to see what some people are saying about wars and religion.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20807102-5007146,00.html

hmmm

2006-11-20T11:25:00.000+10:30

I believe that while we have more than we need on this continent, and others die for want of it, there can be no lasting peace. (Agnes Keith)

A sermon on Hannah

2006-10-30T11:38:00.000+10:30

29.10.06 1 Samuel 1:19-28

I don’t think it’s just my children I think it’s a recent phenomenon, but kids these days always seem to be invited to multiple children’s parties. My house hold is no exception Some weeks its not unusual to have several invitations stuck on our fridge.
More often than not, though it causes a problem, especially with little ones. You see little ones don’t seem to understand the point of a birthday present. While you and I understand that birthday presents are meant to be given away they aren’t able to comprehend this difficult adult concept. They think that the present is for them! Every now and then there are even tears when they have to give the present away. Its hard being a five year old sometimes!

I wonder how many of us adults have given a gift that we have wanted to keep ourselves. That’s exactly the story for today. And let me warn you right from the start this is a story about extraordinary faith. It’s a story about letting God take care. It’s a story that we can easily find ourselves involved in.

Context.
On Sunday nights we have been discussing the life and times of the Old Testament Prophet, Samuel. Samuel plays a decisive role in the history of Israel. He was the last of the OT judges and appointed the nations first king.

Samuels’ beginning though was not altogether without problems. You see there was a time when he wasn’t looking like he was going to get a Guernsey.

Hannah, that is Samuels’s mother didn’t have children. If you know anything about ancient near eastern culture you would know that its not good. In fact its really, really bad. A bit like the biggest curse you could ever have on your life. Having a child was everything for a woman. It meant you were valued, it meant you contributed. In popular perception it meant that God had blessed you. So to not have a child the opposite applied. But even more. To not have a child meant that you had no one to take care of you when you got old, no one to provide for you. No one to carry on the family name. In short it was like having no future.

But it gets worse, you see her husband had another wife (a very brave man!) and she had at least four kids. And she would rub it in like you would not believe. This caused Hanna great pain and distress. It’s a bit like having a permanent reminder of your inadequacies in front of you every single day. Now the story is a bit more complicated than this but finally one day in absolute frustration Hannah goes to the Temple of the Lord and cries out before God. God she says if you give me a baby boy I will give him back to you to serve you all the days of his life.

This is where we pick up the story of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, Elkanah the husband of Hannah, Eli the priest of the Lord and Samuel who is soon to be born.

The bible tells us that the Lord heard her prayer and acted on her request.

So you get what’s going on for Hannah. At one stage she had absolutely nothing, no hope, no inheritance, no future and now because God heard her prayer she has it all. And all wrapped up in this little kid called Samuel.

The point for Hannah

And here’s the thing, she promised to give him away. She said to God that if he gave her the blessing of a child then she would dedicate that child back to his service.

Now I want you to think about this. Not so much about the child, but think about what he represented.
Think about her future, think about all the ridicule she had finally managed to avoid because she had proved her worth, all the pain of barrenness that had been taken away, all the hope that was found in this child.
And then think about that as gone. More to the point given away. Finished. completed

But you see this is not some stoic act. Hannah was not some person who had a robotic faith. This wasn’t as easy as how it’s written down, as easy as how we read it so flippantly. And this is where we connect with the story. Each one of us have concerns over the future. Everybody wonders where its all going and how its going to end.

If you listen to anybody for a while you will hear their dreams, their hopes, their desires for the future. Thinking about the future takes up a lot of our time. I mean we are always planning for the future, what we are going to do tomorrow, what groceries we need too buy for the week ahead. What we need to do to keep the machine going. And other times we think as more of a longer term, so future thoughts like have we got enough superannuation for retirement, have our children picked the right career, what investments should I place our trust in and so on.

I wonder though where God fits in, in your future? I wonder if you have given much thought to how you would involve God in where you are going.
How do you walk into your future? These are really important questions because most of us are really uncertain about our futures and very anxious just how they are going to turn out.

I want to briefly outline Hannah’s struggle with her life and see if we can draw from that any things we can learn in respect of our future. I am fundamentally convinced that we today can benefit enormously from hearing theses old stories of faith. If you haven’t got where I am going by now I will tell you - what Hannah was doing by taking Samuel to the temple was giving up her future.

There are 3 things that I want to mention.
All these are found in one little verse - 28 “Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.’ She left him there for* the Lord.”

Lent

Did you notice what Hannah says in the first sentence of verse 28. She has Samuel there in the temple in front of the prophet Eli. Samuel is probably 5 years old or so, but certainly no older. Notice what she says “I have lent him to the Lord.” Now I don’t know about you but that indicates to me a certain reluctance to hand him over! And I don’t blame her. I have a 5 year old in my house and I don’t want to hand her over to anybody. Suzie will tell you I don’t even like dropping her off at kindy! Let alone leaving her at a temple with some strange old guy!!
So understandably Hannah says she is lending Samuel to the Lord. She is giving him to the Lord but she is going to want him back.

Now I don’t’ what to talk with you about making promises to God and fulfilling vows. Because I want to talk with you about how you perceive your future. I wonder if you can sympathize with Hannah because your future is lent to the Lord? In other words you would like to have some faith that God has got it all in hand, that the black space you are walking towards is going to be ok – but you are not quite sure.

There are a lot of us that like to lend things to God. Time, experience, abilities our loyalty. I see it all the time. We make it conditional because something better might come along and then we can take it back. We lend it because maybe God has not got our best interest at heart and he might ask us to do something that’s uncomfortable.

But you see this is not the path of Jesus. Lending yourself and your future to God is only paying lip service to what God is calling you to. If you find that your faith is only a lending faith, then maybe its time to take the next step on the journey. Is it time to really consider the claims of Jesus on your life.

Given

If we go back to Hannah we find that she has made another step. The text says that “as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord…” do you see the progression? Do you see how she has moved and now decides to entrust God with Samuel. It’s a big step really, if you ask me.

My father was the son of missionaries who made the choice to send 3 of the 5 children to Scotland for schooling while they remained in Africa. The Second World War made it impossible for his parents to visit and so the 3 children lived for 11 years in a boarding school waiting for their parents. That’s really something isn’t it. I would love now to talk with my grandparents about just how they did that and what it was like. Unfortunately I can’t, but I would bet my last dollar that it was a huge struggle.

I wonder how much we trust God? How much we are able to give the future dreams that we have, those hopes those things that are most precious to us and give them over to God asking for his involvement in those situations?

You see we are talking about entrusting all our ideas and expectations and security into the hands of God. Is that something that you and I are able to do? Can you say God you are big enough to take care of this for me, for my financial security, for my loved ones, my health??

Can you do that? Because that’s the path of Jesus. Those are the words of the carpenter who says to his disciples “come and follow me”. He says choose me above everything else.

Now I know that a lot of people will stumble over that point, and that it’s a hard thing to grapple with. We are so logical, so planned, so strategic and in some cases so materialistic that its difficult to live our lives in such an attitude of faith. But there is actually more. There is one more thing in this text that invites us forward.

Left

But there is something else that Hannah did. The last bit of the verse says “She left him there for* the Lord.” She left Samuel there and walked away. Wow. She left all her future and security at the feet of the Lord and walked away.

If that’s not a description of total faith I don’t know what is.

Now make no mistake this is not blind obedience. This is not stupidity wrapped up in a veil of religion. This is not some suicide bomber ideology. This is faith that says the God who had led her and provided for her up to this point will continue to do so again.

My friends we are so far away from this sort of faith that most of us will find this totally incredible. But you see my job is not to tickle your ears but to provoke you to see other realities. My job is to say that the God we experience through these sacred pages, who did such marvellous things in the past is alive and well and doing those same things today!

And so God calls to us through the story of Hannah and Samuel and cries out that we might be the same people of faith. Even here in the 21st century, with all our sophistication and structure and confidence. That we might be an anomaly in a world of confusion and uncertainty. They we may stand on the Promises of Jesus and have a confidence that our future is safe in his hands.

There is no more crucial time than now for people of faith to put it all on the line for Jesus. Our world is in turmoil, everywhere you look we are heading for disaster. Its obvious we have not done a good job of running our own future. Why don’t we hand it over to God - totally

Its easy for us as individuals and even the contemporary church to become engaged in excessive self interest. As C.S. Lewis once said “once we lose sight of the importance of God we loose sight of the real importance of everything”. It makes you think.

Jim Elliott a famous missionary of last century said “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose” “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose”

I wonder where you’re at in your faith with God? Lent? Given? Left? Maybe its time to rethink just where we are at and take a step forward.

what a laugh

2006-10-26T21:37:00.000+09:30

That was an extremely funny sound track! Haven't had such a good laugh for ages, and that reminded me how important it is to have a laugh. Life is serious and sometimes quite hard but laughter is so good for us.....so does anyone else have some good funny stuff to share?

very funny!

2006-10-20T16:13:00.000+09:30

Hi Everyone,
thougth you would appreciate this audio... have a look

http://joshualowry.vox.com/library/audio/6a00c225203796f21900c2252ab8c18e1d.html

wow

2006-10-11T09:02:00.000+09:30

Hi All, its been a while since anybody posted!
any thoughts? any news? any great ideas that we all need to hear about??
J

Sermon 20.8.06

2006-08-23T13:43:00.000+09:30

Malvern@6 1 Peter 4:1–19

Our 1 Peter series so far has covered a wide range of topics. I always get surprises when we do series. I plan them out but they always uncover so much more than what I ever intended! Tonight our topic takes on an ominous shape. There is a sting in this one that most of us do not want to hear. And probably as you have concluded from the bible reading, we are talking about suffering.

Before I get to exactly the point I want to make let me just say something about the whole topic of suffering first.

Quite frankly I feel very unqualified to speak to you tonight about the whole topic of suffering. I have lived a charmed life. My life has been good. My parents are together, my upbringing was happy, my family is healthy, my kids are happy. And so I wondered about me speaking to you on this broad topic of suffering.

But I suppose in saying that, like everyone else here tonight, I have seen a fair bit of suffering. I know a missionary family who lost 2 of their 3 little daughters in one evening. I listen many times to the mother of a young man who took his own life. I was in the room when a doctor told another family that their dad did not have long to live, because of a progressive cancer due to the fact of his employment – his trying to put bread on the table for his children. I shared a fair bit of time with a young couple as they lost their much longed for second child.

It does not matter who you are, you just have to open your eyes and see that suffering is all around us.

One of the most disturbing books I have ever read was written by a local Adelaide man curiously titled “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam”. It told the story of a family that had 2 children, the youngest a girl develops a terminal illness. It tells the story of their grief and sadness and then the ultimate death of the young girl. The reason this story so haunts me is that the father decides to leave his wife and son and takes his life at the same time so as to journey with his daughter. Primarily it’s a book about suffering.
This weekend’s Australian magazine has pictures of the twin towers as seen by the only cameraman who was allowed at ground zero. It shows pain and suffering on a huge scale. There is suffering all around us.

There are a couple of ways that people have viewed this whole problem of suffering in relation to God. Minds greater than ours have been thinking about suffering for a long time and wrestling with the issues. I have heard three different approaches to where God is in all the suffering;
There is no God.
Or God is incapable of solving the problem
Or God has set the whole thing in motion and now stands back, like a giant clock maker.

These are big serious questions. I suppose for us Christians though these questions have several answers. Probably the most potent one being the presence of Jesus among us. For far from being the divine clock maker Jesus became one of us and got involved in our world at the earthiest level. He walked our roads, felt our emotions and experienced our pain – but more than that he did something about it.
But there is something else too; and this comes through strongly in 1 Peter, it’s the underlying assumption that this is not all there is. There is more to life than we can see and know, and hear and … feel. This moment of being, is a state that will pass into something else. I was watching a movie the other night (I forget what it was) and in it someone died, as he was dying he said to his close friend “death is just the beginning” that’s our conviction as followers of Jesus that there is more. That pain will not be the ultimate winner, that death has been dominated by life, that there is another side. Something more is coming and will be our reality.

Suffering as a Christian.
This passage before is tonight though narrows down the field of suffering to a very particular area. This passage deals with suffering, sure. But its not asking those huge big questions of suffering that we ask. It’s really dealing with the fact that we suffer because we are following the way of Jesus. I am just going to say that again because otherwise you might be confused with the direction I am going to take... these few verses are really dealing with the fact that we suffer because we are followers of Jesus.

There is no doubt that the history of the Christian church is a history of suffering. Of course there has been great lavish elements in the church, but these are the exception rather than the norm. If you dig underneath the surface you will find a huge amount of little people who have suffered for their faith. Even today the suffering goes on. There are 3 guys who were due to be executed last Sunday in Indonesia. Who I think have not yet been. They are on death row because of a supposed clash between Moslems and Christians. No Moslems were charged and even the fact that witnesses came forward to say that these 3 were not even in the vicinity didn’t get them off. Clearly they are suffering because they are Christians. You could be excused for seeing it as pay back for the 3 sari club bombers. More Christians are suffering now than ever before in the history of the world. Places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iran are lethal if you are a Christian.

I predict that this will be our experience more and more. Our society is becoming more and more secular. And in the process more and more extreme. It’s becoming more tolerant but strangely in that tolerance it’s becoming less tolerant and more aggressive of those who do not think the same. So being tolerant only extends to those who are like you! – go figure that one! Anybody (that would be us) who claims to have some sort of truth is going to get it in the neck – mark my words.

So the apostle Peter writes to these churches who were suffering. And they too were really suffering. A great host of violence had erupted and most of it was directed at the church. They were terrible times.
So Peter writes to them with some powerful words of encouragement. And I just want to quickly note 4 things and then close with a question for us all.

1.
He says don’t be surprised about it. (look at verse 12)

Don’t let this suffering catch you unaware, in fact it’s the nature of life. I think we need to hear that really deeply. Because to often we think the way of Jesus is all about comfort and pews and singing nice songs that leave us feeling all warm and bubbly inside. I think that’s a construct that we have imposed on Christianity not something that has come from Jesus. Jesus didn’t say all those who want to follow him must take up their picnic rug and follow him for a lazy Sunday afternoon of latté’s and red cordial . He said all those who want to follow him must take up their cross and follow him. The cross is an instrument of death. Jesus’ path led to the cross, so does ours – what’s the surprise in suffering then?

2. There is a purpose to it.
Now this is a point where we really need to be very careful, but it still needs to be said. There is a purpose in suffering. Suffering does do something that nothing else can do. Charles Spurgeon a famous British preacher said: "They who dive in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls." I have never heard anyone say, "The deepest and rarest and most satisfying joys of my life have come in times of unlimited ease and secular comfort." Nobody says that. It isn't true. What's true is what Samuel Rutherford said when he was put in the cellars of affliction: "The Great King keeps his wine there"—not in the courtyard where the sun shines.
Now I don’t make any claims to know how this works. All I know is that those who have suffered and come through it are a breed apart. Of course the analogy of gold being refined stands strong in all this. Gold has to be heated to an extreme point for all the impurities to be purged out of it. The hotter it gets the purer it becomes. – I’m sure you get the point.

Suffering does something inside of you.
But there is a warning here to be careful to suffer only for Jesus’ sake and not because you have done something illegal or stupid! I think some of our problems are caused by our own stupid fault.

3. Rejoice that you participate in the suffering of Christ (see Verse 13)
Now this has got to be a strange thing in this whole deal of suffering. The New Living Translation puts it this way “be very glad – that because these trials will make you partners with Christ”. This makes sense to me when I think about it in a couple of ways;
a) the word rejoice has more of a meaning of something like Spiritual rejoicing. Its not a ha ha happy sort of thing. But an assurance deep inside, or a peace that God is working this for good in your life.
b) this is the path of Jesus. So like the first point why are we surprised when it comes along to us? This is what happened to the master so why not the apprentice? This is actually a way to identify with Jesus and to in some way walk the path of faith.

4. Entrust yourself to your faithful creator. (see verse 19)
Of course this is the bottom line for Peter. This is a theme he keeps coming back to over and over again in this book. Here the word ‘entrust’ or as the NIV says commit has a bit more strength to it. It more like the notion of giving over something to another for safe keeping. I was thinking about it during the week and thought its more like taking those precious resources of yours and put them in the hands of someone who is more capable and stronger than you. We have a short word for that – its called faith. Faith that God who calls you, who helps you live your life will not let you down or let anything happen to you that is beyond your ability to cope.

So let me finish tonight by noting one last thing. Something that has been troubling me all week. I don’t know about you but the thing is I have hardly ever been harassed because of my faith. Sometimes I keep my faith so close to my chest that nobody would know that I am a follower of Jesus. It’s a bit of an irony really. Or maybe it’s a bit of shame that we are so reserved, or so lacking in courage that none of us ever get stirred because we claim allegiance to Jesus. I get stirred far more for supporting Port Power than I have ever been stirred for supporting Jesus.

And even though I know all this stuff about suffering here is something in me that asks why are we not suffering for our faith. What is it about being a Christian in this place that makes it so easy?

I don’t know about you but when I read passages like this it gives me a lot to think about…

The brain of the Gut

2006-08-16T15:40:00.000+09:30

http://www.psyking.net/id36.htm

Just thinking about Phil's sermon today- the term "euspanknos" meaning compassion, is an interesting word.

As Phil explained, the greek meaning is "good bowels"- an evocative and earthy term- with connotations of compassion as an expression of a deeply personal, or even private sincerity rather than a superficial gesture.

Also I am interested in odd ideas- for clues that may be keys to a deeper meaning. I have linked a short descriptive article above.

Anatomically, the gut (extending from the mouth to the anus) but in particular the bowels themselves have an extremely dense nerve network. In fact it has recently become an exciting area of study amongst researchers, who are continuing to discover new details regarding the extent to which coordination of contractile muscles and sensations are processed.

In this dense network of nerve cells, which extend all through the gut, the networks are all linked together with "processing substations" (like a telephone exchange)- the entire system is referred to as the Enteric plexus- the brain of the gut. It is extremely dense- some people suggest that its information processing power may rival that of parts of the brain itself.

In addition to muscle sensation and other regulatory functions this network has very dense physical interactions with the central nervous system- especially in relation to emotional processing. Remember times of terror and fear- how closely the gut responds in surpressing appetite, and sending signals interpreted as nausea.

Even in our language today we speak of "feeling things in my gut" a "gut feeling" or a "dread in the pit of my stomach". An intense feeling of grief can cause a "lump in my throat", sometimes thought to be due to spasm of the gullet (esophagus). "Other evpressions like "I was so scared I crapped myself" illustrate this close relationship. Diseases like irritable bowel syndrome and reflux- commonly associated with stress- are manifested in gut spasms and irritability.

In other words our moods and emotions are mirrored in the gut.

It would not be unreasonable to suggest that the brain and enteric plexus are so closely interrelated, that the very process of generating emotions requires a coordination between these two neurological pathways. I need to check this out more!

I remember joking with my friends in the past in a weirder moment about an idea for a movie where a guy's enteric plexus develops its own consciousness and personality- like a second brain controlled from the gut, it caused him to seek food constantly and trick his real brain with amusing consequences.

anyway, just in thinking about this idea- that compassion means 'good bowels' is likely to be far closer to the truth than we have previously thought.

Ideas?

some more about the music...

2006-08-09T09:45:00.000+09:30

this is an interesting article i found on the net, that refers to our previous discussions...

Teenagers whose music players are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics
start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study has found.
Whether it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens
contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behaviour appears to depend on
how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.

Songs depicting men as
"sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex
acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behaviour than those where sexual
references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the US-based
Rand Corporation study found. Teens who said they listened to lots of music with
degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having
intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as other
teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Among heavy
listeners, 51 per cent started having sex within two years, versus 29 per cent
of those who said they listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Exposure to lots of sexually degrading music "gives them a specific
message about sex," said lead author Steven Martino, a researcher for the
corporation in Pittsburgh. Boys learn they should be relentless in pursuit of
women and girls learn to view themselves as sex objects, he said. "We think that
really lowers kids' inhibitions and makes them less thoughtful" about sexual
decisions and may influence them to make decisions they regret, he said.

The study, based on telephone interviews with 1461 participants aged 12
to 17, appears in the August issue of Pediatrics.

[Posted by
theage.com.au 8 August 2006 Copyright 2006 The Age Company Ltd. Read the full
article at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/08/07/1154802823685.html]

Jesus loves wine!

2006-08-03T11:49:00.000+09:30

He must have loved wine! Why would he chose his first miracle to turn water in to wine??

But in all honesty, wine is for appreciating it is not just for getting drunk. It is an experience the flavours and sensations that come from a taste is more than any alcoholic or non alcoholic drink can deliver.
If it wasn't alcoholic it would still be fantastic..... well to me anyway!

well...

2006-08-02T15:14:00.000+09:30

yes well there is something about wine that is biblical. i mean wasn't it Paul who said something like "take a little wine for you stomach"? but i wonder if Jesus would have gone wine tasting - thats the real question!! what do you think?

Was it the wine?

2006-07-31T18:52:00.000+09:30

Well I heard from the horses mouth that it wasn't the wine that ended up by putting him in hospital. He was using a spittoon the whole day. He was admitted to hospital for possible Meningitis!!!

Makes you think really who have you been around......

wine

2006-07-28T11:52:00.000+09:30

maybe thats what happened to the miss universe girl who collapsed after winning the prize...

RefresH

2006-07-27T22:00:00.000+09:30

Wine !!
I thought the idea of wine tasting was that you tasted the stuff and then discreetly spat it out so you didn't actually get drunk! Maybe the person wasn't told about the spit-it-out rule!

wine tasting

2006-07-27T17:24:00.000+09:30

so can anyone tell me what happens if you do too much wine tasting?? i heard of one person who spent the afternoon with his girlfriend only to be admitted to hospital the next day. i have heard of people not handling their drinks but that has got to take the cake!!!

TV

2006-07-27T10:17:00.000+09:30

yep i agree about the TV. its a stupid thing really! i have often thought about selling ours and not having one at all. i heard of a family the other day who don't have one, they just watch a DVD on the computer if they want to watch anthing. but Sheila has got a point... every tv has an off button. so its up to us to turn the thing off and get on and do something with out lives. i do wonder about people who get involved with 'soaps' of various kinds - why don't they live their life rather than living through someone elses?? it seems a bit odd really! of course it sounds like i am a purtian but i do watch a bit of tv, not as much as i used to mind you. i have been watching the series "Earl" latley, more for a laugh than anything though. this how issue is pretty emotive though. what do others think?

RefresH

2006-07-25T09:51:00.000+09:30

RefresH
I agree with Margaret about God not wanting to test us in this way. I am sure He tests each one of us all the time because He wants us to grow and become stronger in our faith, and that can only come through testing times. So if you aren't being tested you're not growing!
As for the unsavoury video clips/music etc. I have been concerned for quite a while that the things we are shown on our TV screens are most undesirable. It seems that over the past years the images are becoming more & more "porn" like.
It is the thin end of the wedge as far as I'm concerned. Cast your mind back about 20 years (if you are as old as me!) and the images on TV were nowhere near as bad as they are now....But I can still hear my grandparents saying how bad "top of the pops" was with all those gyrating half dressed girls on it. And this is so tame by todays standards!
Over the years we have been "drip-fed" with images becoming more and more unsavoury as "we" accept, albeit with a sigh and a tut, what we are shown. And now we can see the decline of honest & good TV shows as you can see if you watch any of the old classics. The contrast from 20 years ago is amazing. And the scarey part is - what will our children be watching when they are 20 years older!
I am sure that this is because we don't stand up and make our voice known, and it is so easy to switch off the TV when it's not wholesome.
So come on folks....shall we make a stand? Can we encourage others to join in the campaign and turn off the telly?

Testing times

2006-07-24T17:02:00.000+09:30

As far as the question "is God testing us?", I think that He is not testing us by making things (or letting things) happen, it is more the case that these things happen to us and the world as a consequence of all that has gone before us, and the real "test" if you must use that word, from God, is how we react to these circumstances/events! He wants us to turn to him, and he does not send us illness, storms, earthquakes, fires, tsunami's etc, to test our faith or resolve. Like an earthly father, God wishes only the best for us, and wants to be involved and comfort us in every part of our life's experiences.

good questions!

2006-07-20T14:08:00.000+09:30

hmmm. those last couple of blogs make you think eh? why are people trying to do all these things and why don't the people who have the power make decisions and take the actions that could help? there is so much trouble in the world and so much pain for those who are innocent. i suppose that is one significant reason why i connect with the Gospel so much. and why i am so keen on Jesus. i believe that in all this somewhere and some time there is going to be a final reckoning. and that God being all knowing will sort out the right from the wrong.
is God trying to test us? good question! maybe. but i suspect not in the ways we are thinking of. to a fair extent i think we are just reaping the results of our own actions. mostly those actions are driven by our own needs and selfish behaviours. i have been wondering latley what the world would look like if we actually gave 60% and took 40%. it makes you think...

Bush and Blair What the.....

2006-07-19T16:34:00.000+09:30

In case you havn't or have looked at the link i put into my last blog here is a longer version of it so you can watch it.
http://ninemsn.video.msn.com/v/en-au/v.htm?g=9E7FFC3E-D199-4781-BE1B-2DF6AACBAE34&f=39&fg=email

Why?

2006-07-19T13:37:00.000+09:30

RefresH
Hi everybody,

Just thought I would add a bit more content to the site. With all the drama happening in the world at the moment it seems like there isn't any sense to it all.

I mean the Israel have a fair point to try and get the Hezbollah out of Lebanon, but is there any need for them to keep bombing and trapping poor innocent people there? When world leaders don't realize that they are being filmed and say things they shouldn't say in public, if you want a great example of this have a look at this link.http://ninemsn.video.msn.com/v/en-au/v.htm?f=39&g=43a6dade-5a73-4747-b68a-1313d1162fd0&p=aunews_aunationalninenews&t=s29 Probably not the best thing to be saying, but then again it is George W!

Now today we find out another tsunami has hit off the coast of Java killing more people. Haven't they suffered enough.

I was watching TV the other day and it was a show that shows music videos a new song came on that I had only really heard once before but I had never seen the video clip for. It starts off with a well known rap singer singing(sorry talking) away and doing what rappers do. Next thing the main 'group' start to sing and what do you know they are all girls and they are walking around in there underwear. Well fair enough they haven't finished getting dressed yet but they then proceed to sing and the words and the visuals that come up onto the screen is sure enough to make any man happy. But than I remember aren't there going to be young girls watching this and thinking oh so this is how I am suppose to act? Forgive me if I sound a bit ignorant but this really does look like soft porn I will use the word they were acting 'slutty'. I know for a fact that young girls think that this group is 'cool' as they put it, and this does have me worried.
Is TV getting slack about what is aloud to show?

Why do we always seem to be seeing the negative things that are happening in the world are do not see what good is being done?

Why are people so critical about others and what they do, wear, watch or how they act?

Why does it seem that there is so much discontent around but hardly any happiness?

Is God trying to test us (common question I face everyday) with everything happening in the world? Or is he trying to show us the bad so we can see the good, or what we can do to help?

I would love to get some feedback about what you think, please don't hesitate to tell me I am wrong about what I have said.

Feel free to visit my blog, My Life in an Xbox, and chuck a few comments on there. thanks for reading!

Oh and if you don't know who this is also let me know. you are only a blog away!

new series on the roll...

2006-07-19T10:51:00.000+09:30

hi Friends!
as you might have gathered we are starting a new series on 1 Peter. this very small book has a lot to say to us, even though it was written so many years ago. Phil started us off last sunday night with 'thinking right'. this sunday night we will be talking about 'doing right'. trust you can join us!

the service room

2006-07-19T10:46:00.000+09:30

9.07.06 Malvern@6 The service room

I’m holding on for a hero… (play music)

So who are the real heroes anyway? What makes a hero? Someone who does really great sporting achievements? Academic success, someone who has business savvy and can make a lot of money?
Of course that is what society says. That’s what is drilled into our heads all the time;
Pick up any mags,
Surf many sites,
Watch any tv

And you just get the same thing over and over again.
‘heroes’ are people who;
· have all the right bits in the right places
· have all the money
· have all the right things to say
· go to all the right parties
· wear all the right clothes
· drive all the right cars
· and are seen with all the right people

Of course you know what I am going to say. I’m getting a bit more sceptical in my old age.
True heroes are found in very different places than what Who weekly or Cleo Batchelor of the year suggest.

Let me give you my definition; True heroes are people who give of themselves.

And as Australians we know this. We get the fact of service. Australians know what it is to serve and help each other, even if it cost them a lot. Just think what is in every sing town across this nation. In every park in this entire country there is a monument to the soldiers, sailors and airmen who gave their life in what? In service to their country. Interestingly our armed forces are called the services.

You see we get service. We get the fact that you give of yourself sacrificially and without asking. The idea of mateship is built on service. In this Aussie culture is closest to that of Jesus. Jesus knew what it was to serve.

Tonight I am finishing part A of our core values. Next week we are going to start a new series in the book of 1 Peter. But tonight we open the door to another room.

If you remember we were talking about using values that come from living in the house of difference. Remember there is a whole stack that separates us from other clubs and institutions in the world. We are not the Red Cross, not the mothers group, not the historical society, not a gamers club, not a group that has gathered around a particular interest. And even though we might pick up some of the practices of these groups, fundamentally we are different. For we are the Church. Gods church and nothing comes close to who we are, and nothing should distract us from what we are meant to do. And if you find that confusing that’s ok, if you find that confronting that’s ok, if you find that exciting and challenging that’s ok. For we are actually on a journey, on the road of discovery and we haven’t yet arrived. Its something that we work out in light of the past and in dialogue with the future.

So can you remember what we have named so far as our core values?

As I am sure you have guesses that tonight I want to talk about the service room.

The service room is the place in the house where you do stuff. But not just good, easy stuff. Things that are sometimes difficult and hard and other people don’t like to do. It’s a bit like the laundry, or the place in the kitchen where you have to do the dishes or the cleaning of the shoes. I mean who in their right minds wants to do the laundry, who wants to put their hands into the pockets of kid’s trousers and fish out all those things that kids gather up in a school day! Who wants to do all those greasy dishes after everybody has enjoyed a roast?

You see the thing is that the church has always done things like that. The church has always been involved with the ‘dirty’ things of life – if you know what I mean.

I read an outsiders view of church the other day.
"Now, he goes to the 'mall church', and boy, have things changed. Lots of parking --first good marketing ploy. He's greeted at the door by a guy who welcomes him, and says that he must be new here because the greeter does not recognize him. Therefore he is told not to bother putting any money in the collection plate. So far so good. Then some guy who's been on Canadian Idol belts out a hymn. More sing-along music, then a 10 minute sermon (very upbeat --God loves you) and you're out of there in an hour feeling good about yourself, and the fact that you've been to church is a bonus."

My friends - How did we go from the crucified Galilean carpenter to a cross-less Christianity? How did we go from a Jesus who invited disciples to follow him to a God who blesses affluence and the American Way of life?
It might have been a great place but it wasn’t church.

Church always has and always will cost something for those who belong.
In 1914 Ernest Shackleton placed an add in the London newspaper"MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS."
Ernest Shackleton received over 5,000 applications from people wanting to join him on his expedition!

In many ways that’s a bit what we are asked to do. Lay down our agendas, safety and comforts for the cause of the mission. And the reason for that relates to our first core value in the service room.

1. We value a servant hearted approach to life.
And if you knew your bibles you would understand this to be a no brainier when it comes to core values.

We value this servant value because we are followers of the great servant. And if you thought you were into the Christian life for the glory… then I’m sorry to inform you of the opposite.

When I went to Bible College down the road from here in the 90s we used to sing a song that just about sums up this thinking. It went something along of the lines of “This is our God the servant king who calls us now to follow him to give your lives as a daily offering in worhsip to the servant king’.

The Christian life is all about service. If we had to define why we had this core vale we could simply put this way; we have an attitude of service because that is what Jesus had.

And just like today many people found this aspect of Jesus very surprising. The Son of God who yet served. How can that be? What sort of a joke is this? But yet it is no joke. Jesus deliberately picked up servant images from the Old Testament and used them to refer to himself. He even went so far as to say that his mission was to serve, listen to Mark 10:45 “for even the Son of Man (that was how Jesus referred to himself) did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

And then think about the cross. What happened then? Jesus served you.
He served in your place,
he served as your substitute,
he served as the sacrifice for all sin,
he served as the sacrificial lamb,
he served as the bridge for you to access God in the most remarkable way.

Do you remember Jesus being in the desert for those 40 days and then the devil tempting him right at the very end? And do you remember what the devil implies in his questions to Jesus? He says something like why do you want to do things the hard way, the servants way. When you could have it all! And Jesus says get away from me Satan, they are your thoughts not Gods thoughts. I am here to do Gods things, Gods way. Which is very different to anything else.

My friends, heroes as defined by God look remarkably like a servant who model the way of Jesus. This is who Jesus was, the servant of humanity.

So what does this mean for us? Well let me unveil servant room core value number 2.

2. We value empowering and releasing people to serve together using their God given gifts. (I know a bit of a mouthful – you can tell me how to shorten it later!)

So not only do we have a saviour who is a servant, each one of us has been given at least one gift (some many more) to serve each other and to serve the world. And it’s the job of the church (that is all of us) to help you discover, develop and deploy your gifts. They are things that were given to you to help all of us. To make all of our lives better. And to help us to be the church.

Each and every person here has a role to play in serving, in being the church. And just because you think you are no good, your undereducated, your to old, to young, to poor, to geeky – whatever – doesn’t mean a thing. God is calling us to a non negotiable – that the Christian life is about serving and each one of us is being equipped to serve.

My friends the people who are heroes in Gods eyes are those who give their life in service of others. You know there are heroes among us and they are in front of us every single day. People who make it their lives calling to serve in the way of Jesus. And instead of looking for the bright lights, the stand outs, the people who make it on to the front cover of who weekly – if we looked for the humble the servants we might discover a most remarkable thing.

You see funny things happen when we serve let me give you three different examples of what I mean as we understand this core value of service.

1. If we serve each other in the church we pretty soon cotton on to the fact that Jesus is active among us. Think about this one for a moment. Serving is not a natural action its not something that we do easily or with out effort. But when we do it, something holy happens. Something not ordinary takes place in our presence and if you really take the time to look you can see if for yourself.
I get so excited when others use their God given gifts and serve.

2. But it’s not only us that notice these things. People know that Jesus is alive in the world if we use our gifts to serve the community. They know he is alive because they see people who claim his name doing things that no one in their right mind would do. The history of the church is chocker block full of people who have in many peoples eyes thrown away their life in service of others. People just don’t get it why the church serves, they just don’t understand and all they can do is say either these guys have been smoking some really funny kind of weed or they have had something change them internally. You see God has intended service to be evangelism. That people might see our actions and give praise to God for what they have seen.

3. And the 3rd point. I remember reading a book titled 20 hot potatoes Christians are afraid to touch by Tony Campollo in it there was a chapter about how single, widowed and divorced Christians can resist sexual temptation and yet remain sane. Campollo, if you have ever read anything of his or heard him speak is a straight shooter. You think Dr Phil from Oprah Winfrey has got tough love, you just wait till you hear this bloke! In this article, he makes the outlandish statement that the ‘cure’ if you like that word, the cure for the build up of sexual tension can be relieved by serving. In other words God designed serving to ease the pressure of all that goes on inside. I told you funny things happen when we serve! You know I think he is right. I think that God gave us service for a whole stack of reasons.

My friends let me finish. The serving room is a really important part of who we are as the Church. It sets us off because we were made to follow the great servant – Jesus. And each one of us have been given gifts to serve.

What a great privilege it is to go against all that the world says is right and heroic. I couldn’t think of a better challenge to take up. Do you want to join me in gaining hero status?

2006-07-03T16:30:00.000+09:30

2.7.06 The worship room
Isaiah 6 Isaiah's Commission
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

You remember that over the last couple of weeks we have been working through our core values. The first week had to do with fellowship – or how we relate to God and to each other. Last week it was around the message we have received from God and how we are to share it.

I was planning to span this over 5 weeks. But I have decided not to but to do tonight and finish with next week. In a couple of months we will come back to it and have another look. I didn’t want to core value us out!

And you will also remember that we have been using the house image.
The place where we live that separates us off from a footy club or the guides, or the uni society that exists to drain every bar in town and boost Coopers profits.

Tonight we enter the third room of the house where we reside as the people of God. The worship room.
I did think about calling this the throne room, but sometimes people refer to that as the toilet – so that cancelled that one.
I also did think about calling it the TV room because we seem to be very good at giving the TV our undivided loyalty. But then just decided to stick with the worship room. Simplicity is good I think.

So the worship room is tonight’s big theme.
I reckon if I asked you to describe what worship is you might well say its coming here for an hour or so on Sunday singing some songs, saying some prayers, hearing the Bible read and a sermon preached and not forgetting the cup of coffee afterwards. And if you were to say that you would be exactly right with the first of our core values.

1. We place the highest priority on gathered worship.
If anybody has ever listened to me over a period of time you would know that there are a couple of themes for me that remerge over and over again. One of them is that it’s important to meet together as a community to celebrate what God has done for us.

And recently I have come to understand that there is a wide variety of emotions that need to be engaged in our gathered worship.
Ecclesiastes 3 gives us a fair list, many of which apply to our gathered worship times. Let me read it out for you.
A Time for Everything1 For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up.4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away.6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away.7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak.8 A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.

But the thing is that we should meet. And even though there is great admiration in society for people who stand alone against all the odds there is no such thing as solo Christians. The bible and the church have never endorsed Christianity in solitude. Of course there are periods where you need to be alone but then there must be a coming back together.

The book of Hebrews reminds us to “not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another”. (Heb 10:25). If you read carefully through the book of Acts you will see just how many times the early church got together to bring their praises to God, to break bread, to hear the apostles preach and to pray.

The story of the minister and the old Scott farmer.

Let me tell you why it is so important for us to be here together every week;
It strengthens us, it bonds us together.
It reminds us who we are – the church
It helps us reframe life from Gods perspective
It unites us in a common purpose and allows us fellowship.
It knocks our rough edges off – the chair in the glass beads.
It lets us hear the message, the story of faith, from a different perspective.
But more importantly it gives God his due. We take an hour and a bit out of our week to remember first things first that he is God and we are his creation. – we worship him for the simple fact that he is worthy of our worship. We remember creation, cross and consummation.

And in this gathering together we remember just whose presence we evoke when we come here.. Isaiah 6 our reading tonight. What could Isaiah say but woe is me.

You see primarily Worship is dangerous. You come close to The Holy God. You will not always hear what you want to hear or feel or experience what you think you should.

And so to reflect the nature of God we work hard to make this the best event we can. We have a value of being excellent to the best of our abilities in corporate worship. I and the team here are committed to making this holy hour the best representation of what God means to us that we can.

But there is more to our core value of worship than one hour a week. So here is our second core value in the worship room.

2 we have a commitment to worship that permeates all aspects of our lives.
(there are a number of components to this one)

I used to be really worried as a kid. I had this huge dilemma on my hands. Because my parents would tell me about heaven. That it was a place where God was. The most wonderful place on earth, all the best things that you ever imagined were there. And I used to love that and really look forward to being there. But then the problems would start because they would say that when we got to heaven we would worship all the time. I cannot tell you how much of a tight spot that would put me in.

Because I did truly want to go to heaven but I didn’t like the one hour on a Sunday that I called worship. I didn’t like the songs, I didn’t like the seats, I didn’t like having to be quiet, I didn’t like being indoors, I didn’t like the moth ball smelling old ladies that used to rub my hair and tell me how big I had gotten but above all I didn’t like the sermons my dad used to preach!!

I wanted to go to heaven but I didn’t want to worship for the rest of eternity!!!

Finally I discovered that the definition of worship was far more than one hurried hour where my dads talking filled half of it!

Worship encompasses all of our life. Our whole life is worship. If you want to follow Jesus then you have no other option but to think this way. And that’s not a comment I make often.
Listen to a well known passage from Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sister, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – (why) this is your spiritual act of worship.” This implies that all of life is about worship – about Giving God the glory.

You see, to portion out our life into different segments is the great danger of the Christian life. There really is no such things as a Sunday Christian. You don’t clock your Christian life on when you wall in the door and then off again when you walk about. We are followers of Jesus when we fill in our tax returns, go to the footy, when we drive, when we work, pay or bills, speak with the Indian calling about the new mobile phone deal, play, sleep, watch TV, hire DVDs’ go on the internet and every single other activity that humans can do.

This church has long had the slogan “a 7 day a week church” maybe we should think in terms of “7 day a week worshipers”. All of our life as Christians exists to bring glory to God.

The thing is though there is more to this than meets the eye. to live your life where God is in every part - does something to us. To live your life in an attitude of worship changes us and in the process transforms us. So as part of this core value I want to affirm that growth is the norm is for every Christian. People who have a passion for God, who worship with their every breath have a hope for life that can been seen by everyone. They have something there that stands out from the crowd. Its like they have been in the room with the living God who’s train fills the temple and their life has been touched with the coal from the alter.
Don’t you want to be like that!? I know I do.

My friends tomorrow morning when you wake up ask God to help you be a 24/7 worshipper. As God to help you pray, ask God to give you eyes to see where he is working in the world.

But not only does it make a difference to you but it makes a difference to us You see I suspect that our corporate worship reflects the hearts of the individuals. The quality of what we have here in part comes from what we bring collectively.

My friends let me encourage you to hunger for God, an enthusiasm for life, faithfulness in prayer and a life that worships every single minute of the day. And let me call to you every Sunday night to gather here and be the church.

The message room 25.06.06

2006-06-26T13:40:00.000+09:30

Core values - The message room

If you remember we are neck deep into a series on our core values. Core values are those things that propel us to act in a certain way. And they stop us from doing other things. They define who we are. There are lots of examples of core values being worked out in the Bible. There was a stand out figure in the Old Testament by the name of Nehemiah who was asked by God to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. It’s a long story but Jerusalem was in ruins without any walls or defences. Now it was a big enough job in itself to rebuild the walls. But Nehemiah’s other problem was that the surrounding cities did not want Jerusalem’s walls to be rebuilt and so they tried attempt after attempt to distract Nehemiah from his work. They were so keen on dragging him away from this task that they sent false emissaries from Nehemiah’s king (who Nehemiah didn’t realise were false) to tell him to stop and go immediately to see the king. And Nehemiah’s answer? “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down”. You see Nehemiah was clear about what he was about and what he was supposed to do. It helped him define what he should and should not do.

I am deliberately pushing core values into your face because I want us to really think about what we should and should not be doing. Who we are and what makes us tick and what sets us apart from clubs and groups that are in society.

Last week I introduced you to the house metaphor. The house is the place where we live as a community of faith. Its Gods house and living in that house defines us off from everything else that is going on around us.

Of course the house has rooms in it. Rooms that exist for different functions. Last week I talked about the family room where we relate to God and then to each other. I was encouraged to see so many people connecting with each other last Sunday night. I have wondered all through the week if anybody was brave enough to call someone else and to pray with them.

Tonight I want to talk about the next room in the house – the Message room. I know it’s a funny title but I am using that word ‘message’ deliberately. Hopefully by the time I am finished you will understand!
Like the fellowship room there are 2 core values in the message room. 2 things that we have to really wrestle with and think about and understand. Let me get on with it then!

1. We value the inspired written message from God. (the Bible)
Thirty years ago the language used might have been something like our core value is to recognise the authority of the Word of God. For many of our ancestors the written message from God – the Bible was very important. They were strong on reading it, memorising it and basing their life around it. Look back over time and see just how many people have names that come from the Bible. Whole cities and nations have been built on the teachings found in the bible. Cecily read out tonight just one story from among many of people who have given their lives because they believed this book held something important for everybody to have a chance at understanding. Many, many down through history have sacrificed their lives or their careers to translate and explain the bible.

Lately though, in the past 100 years or so, it has been somewhat put to the side, or marginalised in many ways. Even the church, if you can believe it, has raised questions of doubt over the Bible. But the thing is that the Bible keeps bouncing back. I know of no other book in the history of humanity that has undergone so much scrutiny and analysis. And yet despite all of that it still holds together, it still has its integrity.

Now the Bible is not just an amazing book because it has undergone all these tests but because of what it claims for itself. It dares to declares that its the very words of God. The inspired breath of God for us to understand who God is and in turn who we are. And it records the history of how God has been working in this world, right from the very beginning and then the prophets to Jesus and the early church. It maps out for us how God has been interacting with humanity in a saving role right down through the generations.

So let me get to the point what I want to say to you - this sacred book is significant for who we are. And its important for a whole stack of reasons. I could spend weeks working on this but let me just quickly pad them out;

It’s a core value because it tells us everything we know about Jesus. It doesn’t contain his whole life, in fact there are huge gaps in his early child hood and many things that are skipped over. But it informs us of the significant bits. Things like what he came to do and what affect that has on us. / Later on in the Bible, Jesus is called the author of life. In other words you want to live life well then copy him and the way he does things. And it also tells us that the way of salvation, now and in the time to come, is only through Jesus. So you see its important for us to grab hold of these things.

It’s a core value because it tells us how God has acted in the past. And so if God is unchanging then it’s a fair bet that’s the way he is going to act in the future. In other words how he related to the bible characters is how he relates to us. More importantly it means that God is not a complete mystery, and we are not left stumbling in the dark.

Many people understand the Bible to be a living book. That is, it has a knack of reapplying itself to its current environment. It tells us that God has not left us along nor does God forget our struggles and suffering. For years the Bible has been bringing comfort to many different people. In their times of joy or sadness or difficulty. Because of what they read between its pages.
But also it’s a core value for us because its the primary way in which God communicates with us. Over the years I have received specific guidance from simply reading the Bible. Words that I have read many times have suddenly jumped out from the page at me as if they were pop-ups. God by his Spirit continues to use this ancient book, that we treat with such casualness (nonchalance) to change the course of history today – our history. Chinese church do not put their Bibles on the floor…

But let me say this -its no good us just hearing that message. Its no good just reading the bible and marvelling at it and thinking what a great book it is.
The Jordan River runs down through Israel from the top of the country out of the sea of Galilee. It runs right down through the country and then into what is called the dead see. So this quite large river that gives so much life to hundreds of acres of fertile land runs into the dead see, right down at the bottom, and dies.
The Dead Sea has life going in but nothing going out. Over the years because there is nothing going out, the water is evaporated and what’s left behind is an incredibly salty mix. So the fresh water of the Jordan river comes into it but its quickly swamped with the highly salty waters of the Dead Sea. Because of its high salinity its actually possible to float on the waters with no problems at all. But the thing is its called the dead sea for a reason, because nothing can live in it. It gets life in only for it to die.

The point for us is that if all we do is take life in, that is we take the message of God in, the message of grace of hope of healing of good things in and don’t give it out. Then we are just like the Dead Sea.

That’s why the second of our core values from the message room is

2. An uncompromising commitment to living out the message.
I have deliberately used that word uncompromising in the sentence, although I was thinking about stubborn, or dogged, or gritty.
Let me tell you this is the hard end of the deal for tonight. If you want to have it easy then turn off your hearing aid now.

I say that because I am realising more and more just how easy we want to have life. And I am not just talking about labour saving devices. In all spectrums of life as a nation we don’t seem to want to work for anything any more. We expect it to be easy, in fact we are demanding it to be easy. We don’t want to be disciplined in what time we can shop – lets open the shops all the time! Food! I’ll eat what I want than you very much – you just go and make a slimming pill. Save energy!? What and not cool the whole house down all the time – you have got to be kidding!

You see my friends we are in the grip of something that is not easy to shake. Something that has got hold of this culture and is not going to let go without a struggle. Its called laziness and in some other circles, apathy.

The road of following the teachings of the Bible is not an easy one. Ask those among us who have been on the path for 40, 50, 60 years – they’ll tell you. It’s a constant struggle. So here-in lies the challenge – to live out the radical call of the Bible in the face of our prevailing culture. To hear the message and to not live as the message tells us is to put ourselves into the Dead Sea category.

There are several areas we should talk about in living out the message.

Living out the message is done in heaps of different ways. In one way its done by how we act. People can see who we belong to by the way we treat others, by the way we respond to circumstances and how we react in crisis moments. In Galatians 5:22 – 23 it tells us what a person who lives the message looks like. They have the fruit of the Spirit evident in their lives.

In another way it’s done by speaking. By actually share with another the message, the good news of what God has done in history and in our lives. No I know only too well that many people have been labelled bible bashers. I myself groan when the JW’s or the Mormons come to my door. But a few bad experiences must not dissuade us from speaking the truth in live. This church (us) need to discover ways of speaking about God that other people who yet don’t belong can connect with. There are many, many people who don’t understand, who have serious misconceptions, or who have not even heard about what God in Jesus has done for us. They haven’t heard about the freedom we have, about the release from guilt, about the healings that can take place by connecting with God. / Those of us who have heard, have a responsibility to share. There is a passage in the Bible, in Romans that says “How can they hear unless they have someone to tell them?”

A lot of people have a great deal of discomfort in talking about the faith and in sharing the stories of God with their friends and neighbours. They think its something of an imposition, you should not force that on people. I was talking to a dentist the other day who knowing I was a minister started ribbing me about the missionary movement (with my background he picked on the wrong little black duck, let me tell you). He was telling me how they come in and change the cultures of other places and destroy their practices and alter the way they have done things for many years. The thing was that this person was in the habit of travelling overseas to conduct dental clinics in third world nations. I wonder, did he change any practices, did he alter the way they had done things for many years. Did he destroy some of the ways that they had been operating in? of course he did!! That’s why he was going there to bring dental health into the 21st century // Why is it that we are happy to tell others where you can get a bargain, where you can get a good deal but when it comes to faith – something that has an impact on life now and in the age to come – we are silent?

My friends the lost matter to God, and if we have an unswerving commitment to his message then they matter to us.

But an uncompromising commitment to living out the message has other ramifications as well.

It means that all we do and all we have has to be examined in the light of the message. Even what we do with our time, even what we do with our careers. I will talk about this in-depth another night but some of us here tonight have gifts that are laying dormant and talents that are yet undiscovered. Each one of us here must be prepared to lay down everything in light of what God communicates through his message. And if that does not make you gulp, you’re not listening. Some of us here have practices and habits that directly go against this core value. Some of us need to carefully examine what we do in light of the message. You see the pull of these times is so strong that we do things without even knowing what we are up to.

But let me say something that has been on my heart lately - There are some people here tonight that need to set aside some time, even a couple of years, and formally study the Bible. There are some people here who God is calling to do more than attend. I suspect that God is setting apart some people. My prayer for you as it is for everyone here is that you will recognise that special call on your life.

Whoever we are and whatever stage we are at, to strive towards living out the message joins, us with the ranks of Christians who have lived through the generations. From the early apostles the William Tyndale’s to the modern church. For all of us it will take an uncompromising commitment for us to live out the message.

But you know what? If we centre ourselves on this message nothing will be able to drag us away from what we were made to do. From being the Church!

So even though I have much more to say I think maybe I should end and finish by reminding you of the core values from the message room.

1. We value the inspired written message from God.
2 An uncompromising commitment to living out the message

May God give us great wisdom in integrating these into our lives.

2006-06-26T10:16:00.000+09:30

I was only aware of the smoke screen at the start of the evening and then the images took over. One thing that came to mind is the impact that the treatment of the chickens made! Do we find it easier to speak about horrors that affect animals rather than humans? What do others think? Sheila

Malvern@6 18.6.06 The Family Room.

2006-06-19T10:05:00.000+09:30

I want to talk with you over the next 5 weeks about our core values. What I mean by that is what we do naturally, without thinking about it. These are the things that are at the heart of who we are.

Personally all of us have core values that govern our life. That make us react, that make us feel, that provoke you to do things. Most of us value our own lives; we value honesty, truth, hard work, justice, Port Power… those sorts of things.

Then every organisation has values that govern behaviour. More often than not they are hidden and you only discover them when you break the code. So you go to a new work place and you park in the boss’s car park, you use the wrong stationary in the printer or you buy the wrong milk for the staff fridge and you soon find out what the values of the workers are. In the same way there are things that govern corporate actions. James Hardy for instance, in the last couple of years has shown us that one of their core values is to make money and not to relinquish it. So they have refused to pay any compensation to victims of asbestos poisoning. Johnstone and Johnstone on the other hand had such an embedded core value of commitment to the health of their buyers that when they had a problem with one of their products they issued an immediate recall. Even though it was to cost them millions and millions.

Now the reason that I am talking about these values is that we need to start naming who we are, and what makes us tick. We need to think why we do or don’t do certain things. As hard as it might be. And let me tell you this is a hard task.

As you can appreciate core values go very deep. And they have the potential to dictate behaviour in the strongest way. A couple of weeks ago I outlined a vision of what I thought we were about and just who were becoming. If you missed that its on the blogspot. Malvernat6.blogspot.com. but you see the thing is its no good just for me to talk about the new us without all of us, together, dealing with the things that form our behaviour. Or the things that make us react in the same old patterns.

So, starting with tonight I want to give you five weeks worth of things that provoke you into thinking about who we are. In the hope that we might start to translate that thinking into doing. We cannot be Christians that just think and not do. Just as much as we cannot be Christians that do and not think! I am determined to aggravate us into doing things that bring honour to the name of Jesus. So, tomorrow, what I have said here tonight – well most of it – will appear on the blogspot for you to post a comment on if you feel so inclined.

Now there is one thing that I need to make clear and that is, is that we don’t have to have all these core values all sorted out. But we have to be striving towards them. They are like the place where we are going. And so there is this incredible paradox. While these are values that define us and shape us they are ideals that we are only on the way to realising.

But in all this we must never forget that we are the Church. This is something that I am going to keep on hammering. Together we make up the living breathing, moving agent of God. We make up the picture for our generation to see. We are not a fraternity, not a society, not a union, not a school, not a crowd. But the church. Something very unique.

So to help us get a handle on what sets us apart from a club or a society. Tonight I want to begin to paint an image in our minds. Its an image of a house that’s made up of five rooms. The house is Gods house and the rooms are where we live and were we call our home. It’s the place where we belong. This is who we are meant to be. And when I talk about the rooms these are the things that set us apart from a club or a social gathering. Living in these rooms is what defines just who we are and what we are about.

The family room
So the first room in the house where we live is the family room. This is the place were we relate to one another.

There is something about a family that is quite unlike anything else on the face of the earth. Now I have got to acknowledge that my experience of family has been very good and I know that not everyone has had such an experience. But lets just think about family in the best possible light that we can. Even if your picture has to come from an American soap that’s ok for today! Although probably the big brother family room image is not really helpful!!

When I was a kid we had a family room. A place where everybody would hang out and just sort of vege. On Friday nights after the obligatory trip to the library we would watch a bit of tv and more often than not make toast with butter on it – that was about the extent of the budget
But I remember the main thing about it – it was a place where you could just be you, secure in your relationships. This is very important.

The family room is a place where we value 2 particular relationships. 2 core values that I need to quickly unpack for you tonight.

1. We value a relationship with God through Jesus in the Power of the Holy Spirit.
A bit of a mouthful but this is a pretty straightforward core value. You would expect something like this in a church environment. But I want to put this out there first because it underlines a key theme; that our total allegiance is to God and to building a relationship with Him. Our whole community is built around God being in the middle of everything that we do and us being relaxed in Gods presence. We are Gods people; the Bible actually calls us the children of God. Let me again quote my favourite verse from 1 John 3:1 “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is what we are!” (NIV) And if that does not cause a stirring in your soul then maybe you should check your pulse. You see we have this unique relationship with the ultimate power behind the ultimate power. There are no words to describe just how awesome God is (and I mean that in the purest sense of the word). The Only God of the universe is our father. He calls you son, he calls you daughter.

And the reason this is so important to us, the reason its one of our core values is that is important to God. God made us for the single purpose to be in relationship with Him. Every single day of your life God is actively looking to connect with you. It has to be important to us because its important to him.

And there is another reason that this is our core value;
The alpha Church of England joke “we will miss God but we think we can get on fine without him”

This is the thing that we can get so self reliant, so resourceful, so full of self importance that we think we can do without God. But I never want to let us go there.

So our core value is to have a relationship with God. To seek a vital growing connection. One that never rests on its past success but is constantly determined to be closer and more humble and listening better to the Spirit of God. And so what this means is that we cut away anything that gets in the way of our relationship with God. This is what we seek to develop, to work on, to think about, every time we meet. This is why we come to worship. To life group. This si why we promote personal bible reading and prayer. These things are important. These are the moments when we can drag ourselves away from all that goes on around us and reengage with God.

So our first core value in the family room is that we value a relationship with God.

So, the second of our core values in the family room relates to us;
We value honest, caring relationships with one another.

If a relationship with God is one of a parent and child, then to each other we must be brothers and sisters. I wonder if that’s how you think about one and another?

In the Bible its fairly obvious that there is a special way we are meant to treat each other. And lately people have been writing about what they call “biblical community”. That is caring for each other in a way that reflects how the early church lived.

Now the reason I am putting this forward as a core value is not just because its found in the bible, its not just because this was the way God has actually made us. Its because when it all boils down to it we are family.

Of course there are clubs and social gatherings that do care for each other. But the real difference for us is that we have a common connection. Each one of us have been bought with a price. Each one of us is the recipients of Gods grace and Jesus died for all of us. That’s why it breaks my heart when people are standing alone after the service or some are ignored. What does this say about being family - That’s not who we are. So I bring before you tonight a core value of honestly valuing a relationship with one another. Of seeking ways to relate on a deeper level with one another. I don’t know exactly how to do this – but I do know it when I see it. I bet you do to.

The thing is this is not just for us as an in-house experience. The church always exists for those who do not belong. Our valuing honest and caring relationships has no boundaries of who it applies to.
Sue Gorman friday - bored with the church as a girl and left, but came back because it was a relational connection with some other young Christians. She found something there with them that was different than anything else she had ever experienced before. She became a Christian, her sister and her brother also. All three of them are Christians (one I worked with in India!) and now ministers. And the one who was speaking to us ministers yesterday is the moderator of the synod of Victoria and Tasmania. That’s the sort of influence we are about!

I wonder how we start this process of really caring for one another? I wonder how we make it happen? Of fostering real community among each other. Maybe tonight I can make one suggestion; once per week we contact someone associated with this congregation, we ask them how their week has been and then right there and then we pray for them asking God to care for them and help them this week. And if praying out loud freaks you out, to tell them that we will pray for them during the week. If we were to do something as simple as that we would thirty times our care and concern for each other.

My friends if we are not about relationships then what are we about? If we are not caring for each other as a family in the best sense of the word what are we doing here? And if we don’t embrace those who walk in these doors or we come into contact with then what are we saying?

And its not just that we have to care for each other but we have a responsibility to hold one another accountable for the way we live. To keep each other honest before the Lord. This life is a shared life, the road we walk was not meant to be done alone. But with all of us, together.

There is so much more I can say about this. However I will stop here with these last words.
God has made us to be in relationship with him and with each other on a different level than any other society. Two of our core values are found in the family room, where we truly become Gods family.

I look forward to next week were we discover more of who we are as the household of God.

IMAGES

2006-06-14T16:51:00.000+09:30

Thanks for the comments Sheila, there were many images going on. but we especially set up the contrasting ones to provoke some thought. of course as you know the fire extinguisher was not part of the deal. i think next time we will scrap the candle nest and use something different to give another effect. did you think that the smoke machine was helping worship or detracting??

this Sunday night

2006-06-14T16:45:00.000+09:30

Hi Members!
this sunday night we start our series on "who are we meant to be" and looking at what we are as Church. i welcome your comments on what happened last sunday night...!
Jonathan

Sensory Sunday

2006-06-12T15:44:00.000+09:30

Thanks Jonathan and team for giving us an amazing sensory experience last night. I was especially drawn to the video clips that showed a great deal of suffering around the world, and that was surrounded by extreme contrasts of peace and tranquility on other videos.
I am excited to see how you are going to move us forward in our community now that you have touched some hearts!
Sheila

Pentecost Sunday

2006-06-07T15:10:00.000+09:30

I'm excited about moving out of one hour of church a week to something counter-cultural that changes the area around us and is a really radical community of people living out their faith by serving in whatever way they can.
This series is great and is going to move us forward in great ways.

refresh

2006-06-06T10:22:00.000+09:30

refresh
Allright Jono!
At last we have a blog site for malvern@6.
Fantastic sermon sunday, a great vision of what Church is and what it can be. Its certainly something I want to be a part of.

2006-06-05T14:34:00.000+09:30

Welcome to the new site for malvern@6 have a read, have a think and post a response! at least tell me what you think! Jonathan

sermon:Pentecost Sunday 4.6.06

2006-06-05T14:07:00.000+09:30

Malvern@6 4.6.06
I think I might have used this story before but it bears repeating. For me it was something like an epiphany, a revelation, it was something that rocked my world and from that moment on has never let me be.

I was in my shed where I was running my joinery carpentry business and it was mid morning. Basically there was only one radio station that I could listen to and for a couple of hours each morning they took at talk back radio program hosted by the notorious John Laws. John was a pretty colourful character and was always stirring up trouble wherever he could. For some reason this particular morning he had just had a conversation with a so called Christian. One of those people who do more damage than good, you know the sort who on radio look dumb even before they open their mouth and confirm it. Anyway John had basically torn strips off this bloke who had hung up in shame.

But that wasn’t the end of the conversation, because John went on to launch a full broadside against all Christians and how they were do goodders and meddlers and prudes and miss informed right wing fundamental idiots. Now I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to criticism and these comments didn’t worry me too much. But then he launched into the church. And in doing so he raised the issue of the crusades and the witch hunts and the injustices done to scientists.

(let me just comment there I find it strange that people are very keen to bag the church for these thing – which I fully admit are true – but never is there one iota of a comment about the churches role in setting up little things like schools, universities, hospitals, mental health institutions, aged care facilities, welfare originations, equitable work places, caring for the vulnerable, orphanages, rescue missions and a couple of other similarly smallish humanitarian programs. Through evangelism and discipleship ministries the church cultivates commitments, disciplines, and virtues that promote responsible caring for self, family, and community. Numerous economists and sociologists have documented the contributions of Christianity to the creation of strong, caring communities BUT never mind all that. )

And then John Laws went on to say something like “well what’s the church good for anyway aren’t they just like rotary or some other service club.” My friends if you want to light my fuse, put fuel on my fire or any other such provocative action, start bagging out the church and start to tell me that it has no value in society whatsoever apart from a social club. I aint gonna take it.
This one comment from this very dubious man set my life in a course that I am still on. I wonder if he knew what he was starting.

Its fitting that today is Pentecost. The day when the church was given the power to do what we were made to do. In reality is our corporate birthday. The flame that has been lit has never gone out. There are a lot of us – myself included- who still don’t quite get what happened that day when Gods Spirit fell on Peter and the other disciples. When I simplify it down I come up with this one sentence “God’s energy is available for the church to do what we were meant to do.

Tonight I want to talk to you about the church. About this church. I think about us a lot. I wonder what difference we can make in this world, I wonder what our particular purpose is, I wonder why we connect with some people and then not with others.

Tonight I want to share with you what I think we are about and in the next couple of days and weeks I invite your feedback. Email me, SMS me, phone me up, send me a letter – whatever – but please think about and engage with what I am saying.

1.
First of all I want to say just who we are.

There is a common perception that this one hour on a Sunday night is church and to some extent that is true. As a church we must gather in community worship. We must do it. We must force ourselves to do it. Whatever it takes we must be here to celebrate our life together.

But being here together is not the sum total of who we are. And in fact if that is all we did for our faith, then we are in great danger of living out that great Australian accusation to the church – that we are all a bunch of hypocrites. Their belief is that we come and get our little blessing and then go out to the real world. Like John Laws comment - we are just a club, a social gathering. A group who does not make any difference to the world – only to its members.

You see the thing is that while I am the most fervent supporter of gathered worship if this on Sunday night is all we do then we are missing the point. God is not honoured by that sort of Christianity and our lives are only partly fulfilled because we are made for more. I am telling you this because the church, the true church, is always in motion. It’s never stagnant. It’s at its most dodgy when its looking inwards at itself. In fact the church dies when its looking at itself. Rather the church in the Bible is referred to as a body, something that is moving, something that has life, and is always in action.

Sure worship is a huge part of who we are. And I will do my best to make these gatherings the most inspiring and useful that they can be – but hear this really well – this is not all that we are about!

To be brutally honest with you I think we have started to look inwards too much. I think we have forgotten who we are and we have become introspective and narrow. We have been so busy looking after ourselves and dealing with our own problems that nothing else seems to matter. I intend to call us out of that, to see the bigger picture. To dream big dreams and in faith to see them fulfilled.

2.
Secondly I want to signal a shift in how we do church.

As you are hearing from what I am talking about its time we had a change in emphasis. Most importantly I want to promote the view that says we are here so that we can be recharged for ministry. (and when I say ministry I mean anything we do in the name of Jesus). Maybe it would be better if we called this gather time together something like ‘refresh’ as in the computer button. We come here to be refreshed in all sorts of ways. In our relationship with God, with one another and to be stimulated to make a difference in the world in which we live.

A famous man once described the difference between an audience and a church. He said, "An audience is a crowd. A church is a family. An audience is a gathering. A church is a fellowship. An audience is a collection. A church is an organism. An audience is a heap of stones. A church is a temple for the Holy Spirit." Do you see the difference. The church is meant to be in motion.

As well as being refreshed we gather here to hear the stories. The great stories of faith that we have which have been passed on down through time until we have them now in the Bible. Then there are the stores of people who have gone before us who have paved the way for us to be here. Then there are our stories, like what we heard from Neal Michael last week and Shelia’s story tonight. Also I want to give time to stories of how people are doing ministry.

You see the thing is that we are part of all those stories – the big story, where God has interacted with all of us. We live in this grand tradition where God is doing a great work among us. We need to hear more stories. Stories about how God is transforming people like you and me into a new people a new community in whom His saving work among us can be displayed.

3.
So thirdly I want to call us to become a living organism by thinking the right stuff.

If we really are different then we need to think different. Primarily I want to promote among us an outward focus. When I was to be accepted into the ordained ministry I offhandedly said “the church exists for those who don’t belong to it” I was nearly kicked out of the room. That’s not the prevailing view of the church hierarchy. But with all my heart I believe that statement to be true. We come here to this place for us – sure, but we are also here for those who haven’t yet had the same experience of grace that we have. So that we can be vessels to dispense that grace and the mercy of God. But we cannot do anything about it unless we know it to be true.

So my plan is to preach over the next quite a few weeks on things that I consider to be our Core values. That is the way we react without even thinking about it. A core value is an immediate response to a circumstance. So I have protection for my kids, I act on their behalf, even though it could endanger my own life, I act just because that is one of my core values.

I want to raise with you the whole topic of core beliefs that I believe we should have. What does our faith here rest upon and how do we react to it. And again as we are going through I invite your feedback.

4
But fourthly, it’s no good thinking about the right stuff without doing something. So I am clling us to become a living organism by doing the right stuff.

I have been really blessed and surprised by just how many are willing to commit to the trip to India. Now maybe we have bitten off just about the biggest of the overseas trips but I am going to go on record and say that this experience will change your life. I suppose this trip represents my philosophy in life taken from that great guru Peter Brock who says “I have always bitten off more than I could chew and then chewed like hell”. It’s my belief that the trip to India just the first of many thing that we are going to undertake. Together, working hand in hand as we are meant to, we can make such a huge difference.

Its my intention to keep this sort of idea going. So for those who could not make it to India I hope that we can do some service here in our local environment. Maybe there is a country community centre that needs a paint, maybe there is a rural library that needs a hand. Whatever, it does not matter. What matters is that we go and be the church in action. That we do something in the name of Jesus.

But I can also see that we can make a huge difference in our local area. I fully support the Big Week Out, it’s a great idea and all those of us who can should do it at least once. But there are some things that we can do as well. Some ideas that I have heard include things like forming a letter writing group aligned with Amnesty international to write and put pressure on foreign governments to let political prisoners go. Form a group to renovate furniture and give it all away to new refugee families. Help support a new refugee family as they settle into Adelaide. Maybe we could fix up a car and give it away to someone doing meals on wheels or sell it to support drug education in the schools.

You see its time we did stuff. Its time we became Christians with our arms outstretched towards God in worship and our arms outstretched towards our fellow humans. And doing this just because Jesus has done something in our lives.

I have also come to realise that not everyone has had a chance to get involved to the level that they would like. Our mission here is to get everyone involved as much as they feel they can. It’s no good being a body if one bit cannot get drawn in and is frustrated! I am going to make it my goal to facilitate each one of us being involved in a crucial ministry.

Let me also say that faith sharing is important. Actually speaking out how God has impacted our lives is core to who we are as followers of Jesus. I will say more about that in the coming weeks. But nights like what we have coming up on the davinci code will give us all the tools to answer the questions many people are asking about God. Later in the year I am planning to run a workshop to give us more skills in sharing what is most important to us.

I’d like to go on to point number 5, 6 and 7 but I think that’s enough for us for tonight but let me finish with a couple of dreams that I have and an image to hold on to.

I yearn for the time when we are a place that is totally honest about faith and life and all the goings on in between. I yearn for the time when little pockets of people are scattered around after the service praying for each other because we have been free enough to share and honest enough to reply. When we can discuss issues of faith and our struggles with following Jesus as easily as we talk about what music we listen to. I long for the day when new people enter in here and by the time they walk out they have 10 new friends. I am busting to see us radically follow the way of Jesus in a way that proves we are more than a club.

I have been fascinated by the goings on, on Everest this last week. One Australian climber left for dead but yet who is still alive. Another climber who is really dead. It was pointed out to me that among climbers there is a thing called the fellowship of the rope (yes I know, maybe this is something that Tolkien borrowed). The fellowship of the rope. It speaks to me of a connectedness to each other. You are tied together in a way that makes your destiny depend on your fellow climbers and theirs on yours. What happens to them happens to you. You are in the same line as them. You are tied to your fellow climber. The fellowship of the rope.
I think that is a really good image of the church. Maybe we should talk and think in terms of the fellowship of the rope.

My friends we are not a club. We are not even close to being an association or a union. For we are the church. Gods instrument in this world. Connected to each other, connected to God by His Spirit. Moving and growing and doing Gods stuff.